MCSE Studying - Week 3

Overview
I have completed week three of studying for my MCSE exams. I was able to get a little more time in this week, but still a short of the 12 hours per week that I would like to do. This week I continued the online course through KnowledgeNet, watched another module from one of the Microsoft Virtual Academy courses covering 'Identity and Access', and did some extra reading on storage technologies in Windows Server 2012.

Cool Stuff
The really exciting thing I learned about this past week was on the concept of Claims, and how it works with Dynamic Access Control. It's probably fair to say that I geeked out a little (a lot, actually) when I was introduced to the concept. This might have clouded my understanding of the details a little, but I can always go back and review the subject. Here's a quick overview, at least as I understand it. We can now use a user's attributes in their Active Directory account to set access to files and folders, instead of just using user and security group membership. Further to that, we can block/allow access to files containing specific content, all without having to manually it up on a file-by-file basis. We simply set up the criteria centrally, then allow the FSRM (File Server Resource Manager) to handle the rest.

Like I said, my understanding may be a little off, and there is also some stuff in there about FCI (File Classification Infrastructure) that I have not fully explained, but still, I was really cool!

Stats
Total time studying: 8 hrs. 5 min.

• Exam 70-412: 7 hrs. 15 min.
• General Windows Server 2012 R2: 50 min.

Resources used:
Configuring Advanced Windows Server 2012 R2 Services

Microsoft Virtual Academy: Windows Server 2012 Training: Technical Overview

White Paper - Windows Server 2012 Storage

In Closing
This week, I'm going to order up the Microsoft Press Exam Ref books for exams 70-410, 70-411, and 70-412. This should give me a bit more of a solid start to the studying, as these books cover the exam objectives in more detail. The Training Guides for the same exams are good resources, but focus more on the job skills that are relevant to each exam.

I'm still a little tired, but the studying is proceeding well. The fact that I'm still geeking out over little technical details is a good sign that I'm still in the right line of work. I can't imagine doing anything else at the moment.

Have a great week everyone!