MCSE!!!!

Yep, I finally made it. This morning I sat and passed 70-297, Designing a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory and Network Infrastructure. With the help of the self-paced training kit and a transcender CD I prepared for this exam.

During preparation I noticed that you shouldn't be fooled by the thin book. This exam requires knowledge from most of the previous exams (excluding XP and Exchange).

The form of the exam is a bit different that the previous exams. You get four scenarios with 10 questions each. The scenarios contain information about a company that will upgrade or migrate it's current IT infrastructure. To make it a bit more difficult the information you need is fragmented troughout business drivers, interviews, goals etc.

I've found that it helps to scroll trough all the question before moving to the next scenario. Most of the questions and answers have some relation with eachother.

It's difficult to give a study list for this one. You really need to know where to place things like WINS, DNS, DHCP, Domain controllers, VPN, etc, etc givven a certain set of variables.
One thing I'd suggest you memorize is what features the various domain levels bring (mixed mode, native mode, etc) and the differences feature wise between 2000 and 2003. When studying this focus on the administration parts of the differences.
Another suggestion, don't rely on this training kit alone for DNS. Go back to the other book and know exactly what's what with DNS!
Also make sure you know what a Windows 98 and NT client cannot do and a Windows 2000 or XP pro client can.

The transcender CD was useful to get used to the different exam style. In this exam it was more annoying than ever that the testing software doesn't support the scroll wheel on the mouse because you have a lot of reading to do.

For those of you who aren't as good with large amounts of information just make notes of the most relevant parts of the scenario information. When in doubt about two answers go back to the scenario and see if there's anything which will make the choice easier.