MCSA/MCSE Exam 70-290: Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment

Learning Material
It took about 3 1/2 months for this exam.. doing atleast an hour a day study.. It was my first experience with Server 2003 so for someone who works with it could find themselves doing it much quicker. I used 2 primary study texts:
MS Press Self-Paced
Sybex's 70-290 guide part of this kit

I also used two other books as reference and extra reading:

Windows Server 2003 Inside Out
Mastering Active Directory

The inside out is a mammoth book - alot bigger than mike meyers a+ all in one but it has alot of extra information that i didnt find in either study guide but popped up in the exam. How i based my study was that i read the chapters associated with both books then looked up the topic again in the inside out book. Did my labs while it was still fresh and progressed slowly from there (thus why i take so long for each exam!)

The mastering AD book is as the title mentions all about AD BUT it gave me the easiest explaintion to Domain Local, Global and Universal groups -when they are used and the differences.

The Exam! (within legal limits!)
Areas i feel you guys doing this exam should know very well are:

NTFS permissions - if you didnt get them done properly from 270 learn them otherwise its unforgiving this time!

IIS - 270's exam had questions on this yet very little of this was covered in the book. In 290 its different we have loads of info (more in the inside out). Security of IIS is very heavy! Spend time on the technet for IIS. Click here

Terminal Services - this was my Microsoft suprise - full of TS questions! - Open the MS press book on 290 and its an appendix with barely little info! If there is a book on TS get it! I only read the appendix so i lost a few questions as i thought i was covered.. dont do the same mistake! Look on the Technet again as it seems the info might be there....

Other areas you should make sure you know are Group Scopes (nice little table to learn!), Domain Functional levels (used this ), SUS - info in the books is okay for this exam.. just deploy one and look at all the options infront of you! Backups and Performance monitoring also featured a lot!.. in fact i could go on and on.. If you not sure about something make sure you know it before the exam because it WILL pop up!

Get as much hands on as possible - don't go try do the exam without spending more time on your lab than with your book.. what i did was but the pdf on my server and followed the stuff as i was reading.

Well good luck and i hope i have covered everything...

-zimbo-