MCSA Windows Server 2012 R2 Complete Study Guide: Exams 70-410, 70-411, 70-412, and 70-417

I waited till I took the first exam to review this book. This book is well written and a joy to read. Its rare for a technical book to be this pleasant to read. So I read the first nine chapters and took the 410 exam. Unfortunately though, I failed. I was feeling good after reading this book from cover to cover. I was doing well on all their practice exams, scoring 100 on almost all of them. I thought I knew everything I needed to know to pass the 410 exam. Going through the first five questions on the actual exam, I knew right away I was in trouble.I felt like I was maybe taking the wrong exam. I continued with the exam but it didn't get any better. So many things weren't covered in the book.Here's what I think about this book. It claims it covers 100% of all the exam objectives. Yes this is true. The book "touched" upon every exam objectives BUT it didn't cover everything about all of those exam objectives. From my experience, it wasn't even close.I was lucky enough to have good guessing skills to actually almost pass but no cigar.While I don't discourage anyone from buying this book (because you would learn something), I would caution those who will rely only on this book.

I've earned multiple certifications over the past 13 years; my last Server OS exam was 7 years ago, so I choose this book to dive back in. I was looking at taking the -417 exam (I can vouch that, yes, -417 will upgrade a 2003 MCSE certification). After having failed my first exam attempt, and passing my second, I can say this book alone is definitely not enough to get you ready to pass -417 (or any of the other exams, either).I have used MS Press books for most of my career. My learning strategy may be different than most. I setup my own virtual lab my own way, read through the book, and then try to do variations on the exercises - I don't do them the exact same way. I use different names, different IP addresses, etc. so I'm not just working rote out of the book. I'm also used to the way some of the MS Press books are written - you start out with an infrastructure that is small, but expands as you go through the book - so the examples in the book tend to flow from chapter to chapter and give you a feel that you are building something all the way through to the end. This book is not like that at all. Most of the exercises seem to occur in a vacuum, and aren't detailed enough for my liking. My first Windows 2000 lab was quite robust once I finished all my studying. My lab after following this book felt hollow.Having been focused as a DBA, application developer, and SharePoint administrator for the past 8 years, this book was a good refresher for a lot of the aspects I already knew. However, -417 focuses on what's changed since 2008, with some review thrown in. I saw many other reviewers say this book wasn't enough to pass the test, but I didn't appreciate how right they were.To echo other reviewers, PowerShell and Azure are not covered enough. The -412 content is covered the worst of all. Federation Services, DirectAccess, clustering, and Hyper-V aren't given near enough depth. After reading the Federation Services chapter twice, I still felt as if I had learned nothing coherent. The author does mention "you should find your own labs" for some of these topics, and boy was he correct. Microsoft does make some excellent labs for AD-FS and DirectAccess (I highly recommend them).This book hits all the correct topics, just not with enough depth or good enough examples for me to recommend it to anyone.

This book weighs a ton... Now I am wishing I would have bought it in Kindle form, since most of my reading is done in bed and it's pretty unwieldy to have to hold in that position. Thus far, I am pretty satisfied with the content. The process for redeeming the online content wasn't very intuitive, though. I had to search on the web a bit and found that you have to register on the website listed in the book and it will ask you some questions about the content of the book to verify you are entitled to access the bonus/supplemental materials. Looking forward to rounding out my studies and testing out, since I have it on my calendar to get my MCSE/Private Cloud this year.

It's a well written book that doesn't put you to sleep. Like most other reviews, I will agree that while you walk away with some new knowledge and skills, you will NOT pass the exams on this book alone. There isn't nearly enough depth on the topics and objectives. While I passed just all EOC quizzes and "Practice Exams" in the 90+% range, when I purchased an official Microsoft practice exam - I failed miserably. At the end of the day it came down to memorizing answers for the exams (I'm on a time crunch to get these exams completed), It's a good resource to learn some new things, but the labs are sort of pointless honestly. This book is great if you're looking to expand your knowledge on the technology a little, but if you want to take the exam and really know your stuff, you need to supplement with other sources and really dive into some microsoft labs on technet. I can help but feel the authors know this book will not solely help you pass the exam and is a cash flow for them.

The book has lots of grammatical errors. The 2012 R2 book is the same 2012 version but they just copied-pasted the newer features into the text. The copy paste job was awful by the way, some chunks of text were pasted right in the middle of other content leaving unfinished sentences.Overhall, I would stay away from this book considering how expensive it is compared to other similar books, but you will still benefit from reading it if you are new to Windows Server 2012 R2. Just make sure not to rely only on this book for your MSCA tests, this is just an aid to prepare for your MCSA cert but in no way it's enough, you will need to read a lot more. For instance, 70-410 is heavily composed of Hyper-V and PowerShell, which are topics not very well covered on this book.

Book is clear and readable, I think it's now somewhat out of date for the Azure questions. I needed additional learning resources to pass the first two exams, I'd still recommend the book and think it's well worth reading.

This is a midway review as at least three times that when trying to lab something, the book misleads you. For example has you create an IP scope, and then asks you do do two more to make them into a superscope.....but these other two you can't do off the bat, as they override the original one you did. So that needs deleting before you carry on.It's a massive book, i'm 1/6 of the way through it and i just hope there's no more misleading parts!

The book is a good start but some of the material in the exam is not covered in the book. I passed because of prior experience but someone approaching the subject ab initio would struggle using this material as their only source.

Very comprehensive guide, covering all exams. Very helpful in my new role at work.

Great book for doing your Mcsa