Implementing Citrix XenApp for Windows Server 2008 beta exam

I took the 1Y1-A05 Implementing Citrix XenApp for Windows Server 2008 beta exam yesterday afternoon. I have to admit, it was 'fun and exciting' to take another exam since it has been a few years since I sat for my last exam. I wasn't nervous at all; I have never really been one to get nervous for exams anyway, no matter how important they are.

The testing area had a great view of downtown Denver, from the 25th floor. It was clean and quiet. They were very serious about exam security, too, which was good to see. Much more so than when I've taken exams in the past. My biggest complaint is that they were not brewing any coffee!

Anyway, on to the exam. It was 179 questions and I had three and a half hours to finish. Of course, keep in mind this was the beta. The live exam will, of course, have less questions and time. I made the mistake of taking too much time for the first 100 questions and then I had to fly through the last 79. If I fail, that will be my excuse - ha! I think I did pretty good, actually. It really helped that I have been working on the new 1Y0-259 exam because a lot of the stuff is the same, just with new names for things (see next paragraph). Overall, I was happy with the quality of this exam, but I really expected more realistic scenarios, since real Citrix engineers helped write this one. I'm not sure what I was expecting; maybe some lab-type simulations or something. There was some drag-n-drop stuff, but I felt it was pretty easy, even though I had never configured a couple of the scenarios that were presented.

There was one question in particular that stood out to me. It really made me think back to my days as a Systems Administrator, which is what I think more of the questions should do. Throughout most of the exam I found myself trying to remember what I read in the courseware or admin guide, or questions that I have written, more than actually trying to analyze and reason out what I would do or did in a real environment. But remember, this view is coming from someone who writes questions for a living. I think a true Sys Admin would probably find him/herself mentally visioning the questions and scenarios.

Of course, I have to be careful what I divulge, but the main differences between this exam and older PS exams that I saw were: This one was heavy on streaming - know it inside and out; the new names of the management consoles and ICA clients; you need to know basic networking command-line tools like telnet and netstat. That's what I remember for now, but if I remember more later I'll update.

Things that were the same: Lots of printing questions -- Make sure you know print policies, what their configurations are, when to use them and why. I had to rush through a lot of these because they were in that last 79 quesitons, but I think I still did OK; Know your ports; Heavy on Secure Gateway and Web Interface configurations; Some about the basics like publishing apps, load evaluators, the data store and databases, zones, farms, etc.

Without going into a short novel with this post, that just about covers it. If I think of anything else I'll post it later.