How to gain MCSA qualification

[steebo888]

Hello all,

Im looking at getting MCSA certified next to advance my IT career then onto the MCITP

Would you recommened buying the books from amazon and taking the exams with an aim to complete in 6-9 months or go on the 9 day courses being advertised at around £1500?
Also which companies would you advise to go with on the short courses as there are a nummber of them out there?

[TurricanII]

Download the list of exam areas from Microsoft and read up/practice on those areas. Then book the test at Prometric's website (costs just over £100 for an exam). You can have a couple of exam retakes and still be cheaper than a boot camp - and you will likely have a better understanding of the subject matter.

Microsoft books do seem best IMO for preparing. Don't bother with the boot camp as it is far less valuable on a CV than self study with properly spaced exams every few weeks at least.

[steebo888]

TurricanII said:

Download the list of exam areas from Microsoft and read up/practice on those areas. Then book the test at Prometric's website (costs just over £100 for an exam). You can have a couple of exam retakes and still be cheaper than a boot camp - and you will likely have a better understanding of the subject matter.

Microsoft books do seem best IMO for preparing. Don't bother with the boot camp as it is far less valuable on a CV than self study with properly spaced exams every few weeks at least.

Thanks Turrican
Thats some good advice and i think i will go down the route of buying the books to do self study. I already work in IT 2nd line Operations so have some exposure to servers but only on the monitoring side.

[SpunkyMonkey]

I wouldn't bother taking the MCSA now, that's a Server 2003 certification. It would be a much better idea to study for the "MCITP: Server Administrator" which is the roughly equivalent Server 2008 certification. There's not much point in starting your studies now for an out of date operating system!

[WelshBoyo]

I also found the Microsoft eLearning really useful (but that was because I was doing the MCPD so might not be the same for Server/Network stuff). You can also get some cheap vouchers as I think I got a course for about 20 quid instead of the RRP of 120quid after I did my first exam with Prometric.

[steebo888]

SpunkyMonkey said:

I wouldn't bother taking the MCSA now, that's a Server 2003 certification. It would be a much better idea to study for the "MCITP: Server Administrator" which is the roughly equivalent Server 2008 certification. There's not much point in starting your studies now for an out of date operating system!

My path is to complete the mcsa 2003 then upgrade to 2008 later. I have already done the A+ and N+ which count towards the elective exam for the mcsa.

I know the 2003 is getting on but in alot of companies including mine, 2003 is still widely used with maybe a small % on 2008. I know that there are no plans for many of the customers who house their servers in our datacentre to upgrade to 2008 yet.

[Mr Kitten]

YHM.

[TurricanII]

I would add that your current employer may pay for exams if they are an IT service company - certified employees help them to get/maintain Microsoft Partner status. Further, get yourself setup with a free Xenserver or free VMWare edition on it and play with the 180day trial Server 2008 from MS on a few virtual machines.