James Chellis | Anil Desai | Matthew Sheltz
1 It's the thought that counts...
Michael Chacon, et al give a good attempt to easy your studying for the 70-218, Managing a Microsoft Windows 2000 Network Environment. However, this edition is riddled with obvious errors. Nearly half of these errors are contributed to poor wording (i.e. When you boot a DHCP client for the first time... listens for a lease offer , and chooses one it likes." page 98 -- DHCP clients cannot choose anything. They accept the first address that they receive. The other half are just errors (i.e. "Even though IIS is built into Windows 2000 Server, it is not installed by default." page 712 -- oh yes it is, and you should be aware of that with all the IIS hacks lately. However, the authors are quick to respond to these errors when brought to their attention and Sybex does a great job of making the corrections available on their website. Overall, the book makes a fine attempt to get you skilled in Windows 2000 network management. My only suggestion would be is not to use this book as your only source.
2 The standard
THere are a few things I would change with this book, but, like the other Sybex/Chellis/Donald certification books, these are the standard. This MCSA exam covers a wide swath of topics, so take it last. You'll see a lot of overlap. Know group policies. I even saw and active directory question on the exam, and was a bit surprised. The book did a good job preparing me in general.
3 All you need and more to pass your exam
This book cover everything you should know before attempting to pass the 70-218 exam assuming that you already study and passed the 70-215 exam. It goes beyond the scope of the exam in the area of intra and inter-site active directory replication (at least for the exam that I passed) but it helped me to understand the overall concept. The explanations are simple but effective (not lile the microsoft book).I also used the sybex tcp/ip jumpstart book who is very good at explaining the concept of subnetting.
4 Great Book(S)
I already had the sybex core 4 for MCSE, but i decided to become an MCSA first, so I bought this Book. It is very well organized and easy to understand. However, this is not a new book. It is made of a selection of chapters from the MCSE core 4 Books of sybex.
I passed the exam using only this book, so no matter how they did it, there is no doubt that those guys at sybex know how to prepare u for an exam.
5 Awesome test prep book
Once again, Sybex raises the bar on its certification titles. A very comprehensive title that not only helped me pass the Windows 2000 Network Management exam, but also taught me the skills I need in my every day job. This is more than a test prep book.
