Passed 70-291!

Passed 70-291!

I took the test on Friday and passed with an 866.

I had perfects in:
Implementing, Managing and Maintaining Name Resolution
Maintaining a Network Infrastructure

I performed well on:
Implementing, Managing and Maintaining IP Addressing
Implementing, Managing and Maintaining Network Security

My weak area was:
Implementing, Managing and Maintaining Routing and Remote Access

Like many organizations, we use third party solutions for Routing and Remote Access so I had less practical experience with RRAS.

To study I used the Mike Meyers Passport book, the ExamCram 2 book, the Syngress book, Self-Test software and converting from NetWare DHCP and BIND to Windows 2003 DNS and DHCP at my company.

Just a heads up, my test did have an error in the provided information for one of my simulation questions (both in the text displayed before launching the simulation and the text displayed during the simulation). I’m positive it’s an error, because I did what I thought was correct instead and received a perfect in that category. I did leave a comment for Microsoft on that one.

Bug with trusts, 2003 sp1 and ESX VMware

While setting up some new trusts with some older NT domains, I found an interesting bug that prevented me from establishing an RPC connection.

Some googling (is that a word?) found at least this thread at VMware's forums.

One user recommended installing a Microsoft hotfix, but I preferred to find a workaround if possible and wait for resolution with a mainstream service pack for either Windows 2003 or ESX.

I found that I could use an xp desktop running the Windows 2003 sp1 adminpak tools to create the trust. I did of course have to make sure netbios was turned on and that I added the entries in my lmhosts file. (No WINS at our location.)