Getting up to date on SharePoint 2010 Certifications
So I took some time this morning to go ahead and take the MCTS: SharePoint 2010 Configuration (70-667) and MCITP: SharePoint 2010 Administration (70-668) exams. I have been planning on taking them (along with the developer exams) since last year, but between work and home life, I had not gotten around to it until now. The tests actually covered a lot more topics than I had anticipated.
Coming from the background of taking the SharePoint 2007 exams a couple years ago, the new exams were a whole different approach. There really isn’t a WSS/Foundation Specific exam anymore. Both exams cover topics that relate to the full SharePoint Server 2010 family (outside of project). Some of the things that really threw me for a loop were topics like Performance Point, Search Index Partitioning, Managed Metadata, OLAP cubes, Health and Web Analytics Monitoring and Migrations from various 2007 architectures.
Overall I felt these exams really do a much better job of testing your experience with SharePoint than previous exams have. Next week I will take a day to knock out the developer exams and see how these have changed from the 2007 exams as well. The main thing to have going into the current 2010 Configuration and Administration exams is experience with configuration for multiple topologies including mixed intra/extranet environments and multiple authentication methods (Windows, Forms Based, etc…) as well as familiarity with the use, configuration and fault tolerance features of Service applications.
Of course if you go over the exam topics in advance you will already know what topics are covered… I never bothered to check, so some of it was a surprise to me. And yes, I did pass both exams.
For more info on the SharePoint Server 2010 Certifications and Topics covered, see the following:
Microsoft Learning SharePoint Certifications Home Page
Microsoft Professional (MCITP and MCPD) for SharePoint Server