CertCities.com News
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Aug. 22, 2007: Vol. 8, Issue 28
Editor: Becky Nagel (bnagel 1105media.com)
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SPONSORED THIS WEEK BY:
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- Best Practices for Building a Successful PKI
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In this issue:
1) DULANEY ON CERTS
- Upgrade Your Certification to 2008
- LPI Exams Covered by VA
- Are All Test Scores Equal?
- Virtualization Bonanza
- Book of the Week: 'CCNP ISCW Official Exam Certification
Guide'
2) ZUBAIR'S TIP O' THE WEEK: QUICK FORMAT VS. REGULAR
FORMAT
3) FROM THE FORUMS: BACK-TO-BACK FRAME RELAY, CISCO PIX VS.
SONICWALL, MORE
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1) DULANEY ON CERTS
By Emmett Dulaney
UPGRADE YOUR CERTIFICATION TO 2008
Microsoft has outlined single exam tracks allowing MCSAs and
MCSEs
to upgrade their certifications from Windows Server 2003 to
Windows
Server 2008. Once known as "Longhorn," Windows
Server 2008 is still
a ways out, but having an administrator base versed in it
should
help with its adoption.
By taking exam 70-648 (TS: Upgrading Your MCSA on Windows
Server 2003
to MCTS on Windows Server 2008), MCSAs earn not one, but two
MCTS accreditations:
- MCTS: Windows Server 2008 -- Active Directory
Configuration
- MCTS: Windows Server 2008 -- Network Infrastructure
Configuration
MCSEs must take exam 70-649 (TS: Upgrading Your MCSE on
Windows
Server 2003 to MCTS on Windows Server 2008). When they take
this exam,
they not only earn the two MCTS accreditations given to
former MCSAs,
but a third one as well: MCTS: Windows Server 2008 --
Application
Platform Configuration.
More information on these certifications and exams can be
found here:
http:/
/www.microsoft.com/learning/default.mspx
LPI EXAMS COVERED BY VA
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced recently
that the
education benefits available to veterans and active service
personnel
will now cover exams in the Linux Professional Institute
(LPI)
certification programs.
The benefits are retroactively effective back to July 1,
2006. The
reimbursement will be available for the Level 1 and Level 2
tracks -- where exams are priced at $150 each -- as well as
the $250
LPI 301 exam.
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ARE ALL TEST SCORES EQUAL?
There's an old joke about what you call the person who
graduates at
the bottom of their class in medical school. The answer, of
course,
is "doctor." But the more serious question is: Do
you want that to
be the person examining you when you can't lift your right
arm above
your head?
On that note, do you want an "expert" who has all
the right
certifications but passed every exam on the fourth attempt
-- with
the minimum passing score -- working on your network?
In academia, there are ways of differentiating between those
who just
get by and those who excel. In addition to such recognitions
as
"summa cum laude" and "magna cum laude,"
every graduate's transcript
shows -- among other things -- their GPA. On the other hand,
most
certification "transcripts" show only what the
candidate has passed,
not what they score.
I propose that certification transcripts include test
scores. If you
blew the exam away, you should be proud of it. If you just
squeaked
by, then you should be honest about it and admit that it's
not one
of your strongest topics, or say that you've worked to
become
stronger in that area. In order for this to work, however,
the scores
would need to be reported in a standard scale: percents.
After all,
it would be meaningless to have one vendor show that you got
an 85
on a scale of 0-100, and another show that you got 150 on a
scale
of 120-180.
If pass/fail were sufficient, then vendors would have never
embraced
the numerical scoring that they use on score reports. Given
that
it's not enough for them, it shouldn't be enough for
employers,
either. A change is needed.
VIRTUALIZATION BONANZA
Articles on the recent VMware IPO caught me completely by
surprise.
The Wall Street Journal began an article on Aug. 13 -- the
day before
it began trading on the New York Stock Exchange -- with,
"A company
that is expected to become the top initial public offering
of the
summer -- and possibly of the year -- makes its debut this
week."
The top IPO of the year? From a company that's been around
for as
many years as I can remember?
I read further and fumbled for my highlighter when I read,
"VMware's
clients include every firm in the Fortune 100 and more than
84% of
the Fortune 1000."
Every firm in the Fortune 100! Outside of Microsoft, I can't
think
of another software company that you can say that about.
This was
followed up with, "...yet analysts believe there is an
enormous
untapped market for virtualization."
They already have 100 out of 100 of the biggest players!
Slightly
beneath that, they have 840 out of the 1,000, and analysts
believe
there's room to grow?
Apparently, investors believed it, as well. On Wednesday,
the
Associated Press reported that, "VMware's shares soared
by 76
percent in their stock market debut" That means the
stock started
at $29 on Monday and ended at $51 on Tuesday. On Wednesday,
it went
even higher.
http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=8943
So what took me by surprise? The fact that virtualization is
suddenly the hot thing. Isn't that what Xen (open source) is
all
about? Isn't that what other companies are also doing?
VMware is
big, but it certainly doesn't have a monopoly on this
market. Could
this be the start of another real bubble -- or just a
virtual one?
BOOK OF THE WEEK: 'CCNP ISCW OFFICIAL EXAM CERTIFICATION
GUIDE'
One of the most popular Cisco exams is Implementing Secure
Converged
Wide Area Networks, better known as ISCW, or 642-825. The
650-page
"CCNP ISCW Official Exam Certification Guide" by
Brian Morgan and
Neil Lovering (http://saf
ari.ciscopress.com/9781587201509) does an
outstanding job of covering all the materials you need to
pass
this exam.
Divided into 23 chapters and four parts, it covers
everything from
remote connectivity best practices to device hardening, and
does so
with plenty of figures and other features that make the
topics easy
to follow. And the "Do I Know This Already?" quiz
at the beginning
of each chapter lets you know whether you can save time and
skip a
few pages, or if you need to hunker down and read carefully.
Emmett Dulaney is the author of several books on Linux,
Unix, and
certification, including the Security+ Study Guide, Third
Edition. He
can be reached at edulaneyinsightbb.com.
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2) ZUBAIR'S TIP O' THE WEEK: QUICK FORMAT VS. REGULAR
FORMAT
QUESTION:
What's the difference between a quick format and a regular
format?
I've tried both variations during setup but haven't noticed
any
difference. Is one preferred over the other?
ANSWER:
Regular format wipes out the files on the drive and scans
the hard
drive for bad sectors. That's why using the regular format
takes
longer; quick format doesn't check for bad sectors and is
therefore quicker. Other than that, there's no visual
difference or
effect that's readily noticeable.
The recommendation is to run regular format when you're
formatting
your drive for the first time. This will ensure that the bad
sectors
are detected and your data will be less likely to become
corrupted.
Quick format is the preferred method on drives that have
been
previously formatted. Even if you've performed a quick
format on a
partition, you can always run CHKDSK /R afterward at the
command
prompt to fix any possible errors.
-- Zubair Alexander, MCSE, MCT, MCSA and Microsoft MVP, is
the owner
of SeattlePro Enterprises, an IT training and consulting
business.
His experience covers a wide range: trainer, consultant,
systems
administrator, security architect, network engineer, author,
technical editor, college instructor and public speaker.
Zubair holds
more than 18 technical certifications and bachelor of
science
degrees in aeronautics and astronautics engineering,
mathematics
and computer information systems. His Web site,
www.techgalaxy.net,
is dedicated to technical resources for IT professionals.
Zubair may
be reached at alexandertechgalaxy.net.
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3) FROM THE FORUMS: BACK-TO-BACK FRAME RELAY, CISCO PIX VS.
SONICWALL, MORE
The following posts were made to our forums recently by IT
professionals like yourself. To post your own comments,
please
register with the forums.
To respond to one of these posts or find out more, go to the
link under each post. To read our other posts and start a
thread of your own, go to http://certcities.com/f
orums/
-----------------------------------
*Frame Relay Back to Back* (CCNA/CCNP Forum)
wingnut writes:
"My new boss has asked me to connect two serial ports
on the same
router, back to back (using DTE-DCE cable), using X.25 or
frame relay,
as the line protocol this is for testing purposes.
I'm not familiar with X.25 but I think it's not possible to
connect
frame relay between two points without a frame relay switch.
Who is
correct, me or my boss?"
Read the entire post and responses (5 so far) at:
http://certcities.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?tid=5333
-----------------------------------
*Cisco PIX vs. SonicWALL* (Cisco -- Other Forum)
Mr Blonde writes:
"Our company is currently looking at replacing our
firewall solution.
Currently we have two SonicWALL Pro 230s in a
high-availability
configuration and two Astrocom PowerLink WAN aggregation
boxes in case
one of our two ISPs goes down. We are hosting a Web server
and
currently have about 65 users on our network. The two
outdated Pro
230s cannot provide us with the reporting and VPN capability
that we
need. We've been looking at two SonicWALL 3060 or two PIX
515E. The
PIX are much more expensive and I cannot figure out why.
What is it
about a Cisco router that is so much better than a
SonicWALL?"
Read the entire post and responses (3 so far) at:
http://certcities.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?tid=5321
-----------------------------------
*Distance Vector vs. Link State* (CCNA/CCNP Forum)
itazev writes:
"Although I've found some online Cisco information on
distance vector
vs. link state, I'm still confused about metric and hop
count. I mean,
how they differ considering how good a network is?"
Read the entire post and responses (5 so far) at:
http://certcities.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?tid=5317
-----------------------------------
*Mobo Problem?* (Miscellaneous Forum)
ohmbfree writes:
"When I press the power button on my PC, the power LED
comes on. It's
blue in color, but there's no other activity. For example,
the PSU fan
is not spinning. Neither are the CPU fan, HD or the drives.
Tried a
different PSU from a working computer -- same thing.
I then removed the IDE cables and the power connector from
the hard
drive and the CD-ROM drive -- but same thing. What do you
think
about this?
Read the entire post and responses (2 so far) at:
http://certcities.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?tid=5324
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