I was going to do it, but I saw the fine print said I didn't qualify if I won so I didn't bother figuring it was just a bunch of multiple choice questions. Too bad - the labs would've been fun.
--Brian Desmond
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Payton on the web! www.wpcp.org
v - 773.534.0034 x135
f - 773.534.8101
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Payton on the web! www.wpcp.org
v - 773.534.0034 x135
f - 773.534.8101
From: Myrick, Todd (NIH/CIT)
Sent: Mon 11/29/2004 2:42 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [ActiveDir] IT PrOlympics Challenge on WindowsITPro
Greetings, So who here took the Windows IT Pro challenge? What did you all think? The challenge ended yesterday. So I figure it is a safe topic to talk about now. My impressions are as follows. Overall I had a good time taking the challenge. I think the overall concept is very good, and I challenged my Windows 2003 students to take the challenge as well. I initially took the exam and did pretty well on the Multiple Choice section, and the Virtual Lab's except for Lab 2. That one I didn't pass. (The one with replication problems.) Later I discovered that the multiple choice questions were actually off of one of the Penton certification sites. The answers were not in the same order, and there were different questions each time you took the exam. (I tool the exam twice... to see if I could figure out Lab 2) The Lab sessions gave you about 90 minutes to step through the process to achieve the results outlined in the Labs. This is enough time to finish the first and third lab, but I think they should have given 2 hours for the second lab. The first lab was a GPO lab that required you to create a GPO to push our XP SP2. Pretty easy lab. Just have to extract the files, create a share point, and then create the GPO to assign the software package to computers on a specific OU. The second lab was a lot more challenging. There is a domain with two DC's that aren't replicating. Both times I tool this exam I figured that it was due to one machine not replicating with the other for more than 60 days. So I went through the process of dcpromo /forceremoval and NTDSUTIL cleanup. Also the RID Master is not available, so you have to make a decision on what DC to save. The one with the PDC emulator isn't the Infrastructure Master, Domain Naming Master, or Schema Master. I chose to seize the PDC Emulator via GUI on the DC that ran the testing software (Paris), and then used NTDSUTIL to transfer the RIS Master role since the GUI didn't work. On my first attempt, I didn't rename the old DC, and recreated the computer account using the original name. (Denver) That didn't seem to work though. Although I thought the test user account I created synced. The second time I did the lab, I gave the computer a different name (Based on Jeremy M's recommendation in his ebook, and it still didn't work. Also instead of using AD integrated DNS on the DC rebuild, I used Stub Zones, and I transferred the Infrastructure Master to the DC since it wasn't a GC. I thought replication was working better this time through but I still failed. One thing I can't remember is if I checked the DNS to make sure all the _Zones for AD got created. The _MSDCS.contoso.com was its own zone. I can't remember if I checked to make sure _TCP, _UDP, _Sites were created in the contoso.com zone. (Hind site is always 20/20) I think they were because the NETDIAG and DCDIAG didn't report any problems with the DNS zones. So any insight on what I missed would be appreciated. Lab 3 was also pretty easy. Setup a Trust and then give a user access to files from on of the forest. Just had to setup DNS zone transfers, update the one domain to 2003 forest mode, and then create a trust between the two forest. Then update the share point, and access the share using the users credentials. Like I said, overall a very enjoyable experience except for the replication Lab. Todd List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
