How I passed SharePoint 2010 Exams - 70-667 and 70-573

Hi all,

I passed SharePoint 2010 Configuration (70-677) and recently SharePoint 2010 Application Development (70-573). I would like to brief other SharePoint 2010 administrators and developers about their study plan. Keep in mind that these are Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certifications and not Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) certifications which are bit harder. To practice the SharePoint 2010 development and configuration, I had created a virtual environment as follows:

1. VM Player - A free Virtual machine that can be downloaded here. 
2. Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise or trail version here  
3. SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise  or trail version (64 bit)
4. SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise or trail version (64 bit)

Its strongly recommended to follow the tutorials and practice in these exams.  

1.  Study Guide for MCTS 70-667:
   
   Basically, what I learned and experienced in SharePoint 2007 from administrative point of view is that we had to use Shared Services Provider (SSP) which had a monolithic web application that provided us Excel services, search, user profile etc. and it was extremely heavy. Furthermore, if I had to create another web application, for an instance, I need to create a Web Application and I just want to leverage only search application and not Excel services, User Profile services; we were forced to use SSP with all its features such as Excel services, search, user profile. Its obvious that SharePoint 2007 architecture had impact on hard disk configuration on the server, RAM, CPU etc. 
   
   >> In SharePoint 2010, we could utilize farm level granular Service Applications which we could very early select and deselect the services that are required by specific web application. 
   >>  SharePoint 2010 provides two way synchronization with AD SharePoint 2010 unlike SharePoint 2007
   >> SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services (BCS) with read-write capabilities in my previous blogs.  
   
   I wrote a couple of SharePoint 2010 development blog posts two years and I wanted to learn the SharePoint 2010 Administrative skills too which really appealed me. This was my study plan:
   
   a) Thoroughly checked the skills measured on the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 website for 70-677. 
   b) Watched majority of videos posted on Microsoft website Advanced IT Professional Training. There are very lengthy videos ranging from 40 minutes - 1 hour or so. I watched the videos those were required by skills measured. 
   c) Purchased MeasureUp exam questions. The questions were in-depth and gave at insight of SharePoint 2010 architecture.   
   d) One of the blogs which I referred for my exam: Benjamin Athawes
   
   I passed the exam way above the passing score. The majority of the questions were easy as I had previous experience and a few were quite tricky. I wanted to more about USPA  (User Profile Synchronization Service and My Sites), BCS and overall SharePoint 2010 Installation / Configuration, Visual Upgrade,  Service Applications (USPA, BSC, Search, Excel Services, Managed Metadata Services etc.), Operational settings etc. Exam did not cover much on these topics though but associated PRO exam covers in detail.
   
   PRO: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Administrator (70-668) is more in-depth, requires exam details of 70-677 and case study & scenarios based kind of questions. Its more into planning, capacity etc.. The section b) is an excellent resource to learn and implement UPSA, Search, Excel Services etc.   
    
2.   Study Plan for MCTS 70-573 
   
   a) Thoroughly checked the skills measured on the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 website for 70-573
   b) Watched all "Get Started Developing on SharePoint 2010" posted on Microsoft website. 
   c) Watched all "SharePoint 2010 Advanced Developer Training" posted on Microsoft website.
   d) Purchased MeasureUp exam questions. The questions were in-depth.
   e) Ted Pattison's cram videos that targets 70-573 exam:
        >> Cram Session Video 1
        >> Cram Session Video 2
        >> Cram Session Video 3
   f) Inside Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Ted Pattison and Andrew Connell). It covers both 70-573 and 70-576 exam objectives.
   
    I passed the exam with a pretty good score.

  That's it.

Cheers,
--aaroh