The Mcitp Certification

By Author: Shirley Green
Total Articles: 129
Comment this article

During study, pay particular attention to MCITP Certification, an interactive utility used to transfer operations master roles. In Windows Server 2003, it works much like a Swiss Army Knife in that it can also be used to move, dump, repair, and compact directory database files. Additionally, it's the tool to use to do an authoritative restore.

The power of DNS (Domain Name Service) continues to expand, and as Active Directory is reliant upon it, you must know all you can about it. Key to preparing for this exam is knowing the differences between what DNS was capable of doing under Windows 2000 and what it can now do under Windows Server 2003. The overview of changes can be found here, and you should follow that up with a focus on stub zones and conditional forwarding.

Start studying with an overview of the management console and then look at administering it. Follow that with a study of how to migrate GPOs. New to Group Policy is RSoP (Resultant Set of Policy). This tool shows how permissions and policies overlap by factoring in inheritance and other things. This solves ...
... a great many problems that existed earlier and shows precisely what the resulting policy will be for the user or computer in an Active Directory tree. A command line utility that can perform the same function as RSoP is also included with Windows Server 2003: Gpresult.

Expect to see questions on this exam about server roles—questions similar to those on 70-680 Exam. The "role" that a server can perform can be Active Directory-related (domain controllers) or purely service-oriented (Web server, database server, etc.). Within those that are Active Directory-related are five FSMOs (Flexible Single Master Operations) roles:

*PDC (Primary Domain Controller) emulator—used for backward compatibility
*RID (Relative ID) Master—holds the pool of ID numbers to be used
*Infrastructure Master—handles updates and name changes
*Domain Naming Master—by default the first domain controller in a forest
*Schema Master—oversees all schema operations

The PDC performing one of these roles is known as the role master. Microsoft recommends that the PDC emulator and RID Master be kept on the same domain controller, and that the Domain Naming Master be stored on a Global Catalog server. Global Catalog Servers respond to queries, and increasing the number of these to include one in each large office can decrease response time. You can find generic information about server roles, and which version is good for each, at this Web site.

The MCITP Certification is a requirement that must be taken for new free CompTIA practice questions to become certified on Windows Server 2003. The exam requires you to think through a number of scenarios in order to find the right solution. You'll be at a great disadvantage when taking this exam if you don't have experience with network design. If you do have that experience, however, you'll appreciate the focus of this exam and its resemblance to its 70-217 counterpart in the Windows 2000 track.