MCTS Demystified: What you need to know about the Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure (exam 70-643) Certification

Posted on June 16th, 2009 by Gosia Grabowska

mctslogo1In the past couple of weeks I have been talking about different Server 2008 MCTS exams. 

I have already covered the Active Directory, Configuring (exam 70-640) certification as well as the Network Infrastructure (exam 70-642) certification.

Next MCTS certification in line, and the one I will be discussing today, is the Applications Infrastructure (exam 70-643) certification.

As I already mentioned in my previous articles, the numbering doesn’t really mean the order in which you need to take these exams.  You can take them in any order you want.  However, it does make sense to follow the order, especially when you’re preparing for these exams. 

I would definitely suggest taking the Active Directory (70-640) exam first and then either the Network Infrastructure (70-642) or the Applications Infrastructure (70-643) exam.  The reason is that you will need some of the knowledge from the 70-640 exam to take the 70-642 and 70-643 exams.  But like I said, there are no prerequisites so it is really up to you.

70-643 Exam Details

From what I heard, the number of questions varies for this certification.  It is somewhere between 50 and 60 questions with approximately 90-120 minutes to complete them all. The passing score was reported to be 700.

And again, I would strongly suggest going through all the questions and answering the ones you know the answers to first. Mark the questions that will take longer for you to answer as well as the ones you have no clue about (that shouldn’t happen though, right?).  Once you go over all the questions in your first “round” go back and review the marked questions for the rest of the allotted time.

This will allow you to answer all the questions you know and then give you time to work on the ones that you might not be sure about.  Be ware of changing your answers on the second run — chances are your gut was right and the answer you picked the first time is correct.

70-643 Exam Topics

There are 4 main topics on the Applications Infrastructure exam:

  • Deploy Servers (24%)
  • Configure Terminal Services (32%)
  • Configure Web Services Infrastructure (30%)
  • Configure Network Application Services (14%)

Quick tip for studying these is — make sure you know how to configure terminal services (TS) and web services. These two topics account for over 60% of the questions. 

To find out more about these topics as well as sub-topic details visit this Microsoft page.

Where to Start?

As with any certification, I would suggest getting:

  • a very good information source for your theory learning — this would be either a book or a video training
  • a testing environment to put your theory into practice

For those of you who are going to use our Applications Infrastructure training videos I would definitely suggest making sure you understand Active Directory.  The Applications Infrastructure course assumes that you know how to create OUs, groups, and users. These things, I guess, are sort of a prerequisite for this exam.

As for hardware, you will really need only one mega machine with about 8GB of RAM and 200GB of hard disk space or two beefed up machines with about 4GB of RAM each and about 120GB of hard disk space.

Coach, the instructor for this course, uses Hyper-V to create multiple machines to demonstrate everything on.  You can follow him step-by-step and do the same, or you can use VMware or MS Virtualization for your virtual machines.  This is up to you, but virtualization is strongly recommended as it saves you time and money.

Don’t I Need Experience?

As always, Microsoft wants you to have “at least one year of experience implementing and administering a network operating system in an environment that has the following characteristics:

  • 250 to 5,000 or more users
  • Three or more physical locations
  • Three or more domain controllers
  • Network services and resources such as messaging, a database, file and print, a proxy server, a firewall, the Internet, an intranet, remote access, and client computer management
  • Connectivity requirements such as connecting branch offices and individual users in remote locations to the corporate network and connecting corporate networks to the Internet”

If you don’t have real-world experience, would suggest spending a considerable amount of time practicing on your test environment before taking this exam. The more you break and fix — the more you will learn and the easier the exam is going to be for you. 

Don’t be afraid that something will go wrong. You are working on virtual machines, so take snapshots before you do anything in case something does go wrong, just go back to the previous snapshot and try again. Troubleshooting your own problems is one of the best ways to really learn.

And remember, you will never be able to do this type of stuff in a production environment, so practice, break stuff, fix stuff — and repeat.

Why Would I Want to Get this Certification?

By passing the 70-643 Applications Infrastructure exam you are one step closer to your MCITP, Enterprise Administrator Certification which would definitely secure your current position as well as give you the opportunity for a promotion or, who knows, maybe even scoring a better job.

I wonder how many of you guys out there are working towards the Enterprise Admin Certification.  C’mon, show yourself!

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