So it’s no secret that since being laid-off, I’ve hit the certification trail again. 8 exams in 5 weeks to be exact. The fact is, certification is supposed to be a confirmation of someone’s skill set. That is what I believed when I got my original MCSE in January of 1999. But over the years, the popularity of “brain-dumps” saturated the market with what most refer to as “The Paper MCSE”, the guy that has his certification, but has no real experience in the market. I think in the US, most employers do a good job at screening out paper MCSE’s. But overseas, in particular India, they seem to hire paper MCSE’s in hoards.

This was visibly noticable at my last job where a lot of our work went to Best Shore teams that were barely capable of patching boxes.  They were not skilled enough to serve on-call rotations, or participate in critical implementations.  Yet they held the same titles as the rest of us.

So what has changed?   Microsoft has!  Or at least they are trying to.  Many of the new Windows 2008 Server exams I’ve taken had questions that seemed much more real world than exams of the past.  This was clearly evident to me as I lined up my exams in order of score from least to greatest.  It truly mirrored the experience.  Exchange 2007 is new to me.  It is something I am self studying.  I have a lab environment setup, I’ve seen it implemented live, I’ve read a few books, but I’ve never been an actual Exchange Administrator.  And to that end, it was the exam I scored the ‘worst’ on.

So what else have they done?  Well, the 70-620 exam is littered with simulations.  Or I should say; Emulations.  More on that later.  So now you click on the a simulation button and are forced to actually perform actions.  Setup user accounts, configure applications, etc…  Usually several tasks; and some involving multiple PC’s, in which you have to switch back and forth.   There is one problem with this though.  The simulations are setup so that you can only click on items actually related to the simulation.  If you try and click on a unrelated area, it will inform you that “This function is not available or required to perform the necessary objectives.” or something like that.   So what happens is that if you click enough, you’ll eventually find what you are looking for.   Imagine being in a room with 100 doors, 99 of which are locked.  So basically it’ll take you some time, but eventually you’ll find the unlocked door.

But here is what is coming.  True lab based simulation testing.  Now while you are sitting at your test cubicle, you will be connected to a live server in Redmond.  You may be given a list of several exam objectives, and it’s completely up to you as to how you achieve them.  So if you are more comfortable using the command line, that’s there.  If you are more comfortable using the GUI, well that’s there to.  Decide that you don’t feel like configuring Active Directory?  Well then play a few quick rounds of Minesweeper instead.  :-)

The point is, these new performance based objectives will finally weed out the people who actually know what they are doing, and will actually simulate real world problem solving skills. From what I’ve heard, even the help system is included!! So going back to my Exchange exam, the questions that gave me the most trouble were the Powershell commands, since I hadn’t really used them, when presented with 4 multiple choice options, I was left to guessing. Now had I been on a live server, 1st of all I could have used the GUI. But even if I had been forced to use Powershell, I could have used the knowledge I do have about Powershell to help complete the commands. If you type “Get-” and begin pressing Tab, Powershell with cycle through the available commands.

So here are the Key Benefits to lab-based testing

• Real-life, hands-on testing format requires individuals to actually execute a task, rather than simply answering questions about it
• Places a higher value on results—how closely a solution meets the requirements—not the path taken to achieve it
• Provides a more accurate assessment of demonstrated actionable skills
• Reproduces work environments that more accurately reflect problem-solving in the real world
• Mirrors the actual job demands made in the workplace to help build confidence
• Transforms preparation and practice for an exam into genuine experience

We aren’t there yet, but it’s coming.

Certification, Exchange, Microsoft

Well, I think I got the basics worked out. My resume is now uploaded, and as you can see, there are download links provided in the most popular formats.

In addition, I provided a web version as well.  I think I spent the majority of my time today trying to get Microsoft Word to gracefully export from the .docx format to at least presentable HTML.   It’s certainly not as neat as I’d like it to look, but for the time being, it’s quick.  Sure, I could take about 20 to 30 minutes and clean up the HTML manually and make it look exactly like I want it to.  But I probably make at least 2 -3 changes to my resume each week.  Sometimes it’s just minor tweaks, but other times it’s adding a new certfication to my credentials.  And if I’m going to be making regular revisions, I need a quick and easy way to export my resume into several formats, including HTML.  So I guess that will be my 1st project!

In addition to providing recruiters and hiring managers an easy place to find my latest resume, I will also be using this website as a technical Blog.   I guess you could say that I’m one of those people that takes his work home with him.  I love to tinker in technology, and I have quite an impressive setup that I use at home to evaluate software, or simply train myself on new technologies.  My current pet project is setting up an iSCSI SAN using Openfiler.  I have a mid-sized dual core system with 6 hard drives currently setup.  The NIC is connected to an private router which then feeds into a private virtual port on my Hyper-V server.   The iSCSI targets are then being presented to multiple hosts to setup fail over scenario’s in Windows 2008.  I would like to evaluate the high availability of Exchange 2007, File Services, and SQL 2008.   After that I add the SQL cluster, I’ll add a seperate IIS NLB cluster sperated by an ISA 2006 server.

So if that didn’t bore you to death, you can subcribe to my RSS feed and check back for updates as I finish getting everything setup.

blog, Cluster, Exchange, HTML, Hyper-V, IIS, ISA, iSCSI, Microsoft, NLB, resume, SAN, SQL Server, Websites, Word