- Topics Mentioned
- Certification(s):
- MCTS
- Exam(s):
- Microsoft Exams
There are a number of Vista certification exams that you can take. One popular choice is exam 70-622: Supporting and Troubleshooting Applications on a Windows Vista Client for Enterprise Support Technicians
I have already outlined the 70-622 exam in one of my previous articles, where I provided an overview of the skills needed for the exam and how to achieve the MCTS certification.
Today I’m going to focus on one area of the 70-622 exam — Deploying Windows Vista segment of the exam, specifically the section that covers analyzing the business environment and selecting an appropriate deployment method.
Deploying Windows Vista
The 70-622 Vista Desktop Support for Enterprise Technicians exam measures a number of different skills and the first section of topics for the exam encompasses the following:
- Analyze the business environment and select an appropriate deployment method
- Prepare a system for clean installation or upgrade
- Deploy Windows Vista from a custom image
- Perform post-installation tasks
- Troubleshoot deployment issues
How to Analyze the Business Environment and Select an Appropriate Deployment Method
First you’ll need to make sure that you understand the three phases of the deployment lifecycle:
- Plan — assess the needs of the organization and develop a deployment strategy to meet the needs
- Build — put the tools and plans that will be used to support the deployment plan into place
- Deploy — implement the deployment plan
Windows Vista: Common Deployment Questions Answered is a great additional resource you can use to review this topic in a little more detail.
[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] – The entire write up goes beyond the scope of what is “only” needed for the exam but the additional details will be helpful for you to understand the concepts in general with respect to the topic.
When preparing for the exam, make sure you completely understand the deployment challenges of an enterprise. Things to consider are:
- Hardware — are upgrades needed; can some systems be upgraded in place, what systems will need to be retired and replaced outright.
- Application Compatibility — critical applications that are a “must” need to be identified; from there you can break them into other levels of requirement in the enterprise. You would then need to breakdown any issues that show up in the compatibility testing. The Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) is a tool you can download and use to perform this work of evaluating and mitigating application compatibility issues before deploying many of the newer versions of Windows, including Vista and other application upgrades such as changing from one version of Internet Explorer to another.
- User State Migration — going from Windows XP to Vista has been made easier with a number of automated tools such as the Windows User State Migration Tool (USMT).
- Technical Subject Matter Experts (SME) — as part of the deployment planning you need to consider the technical knowledge level of your own staff to address the efforts of the deployment challenge and whether additional assistance may be needed.
Another crucial part that you’ll need to understand is the hardware requirements for a successful (and supported) installation of Vista on the systems once the deployment is completed.
Make sure to review the details on systems requirements that I included in my previous post. The article focuses on a different Vista exam, but the information about Vista requirements is valid for this exam as well.
In the post I talk about what you need to take into consideration when pairing up your hardware with the appropriate Vista edition. I also cover understanding the different available Vista editions and understanding the difference between minimum and recommended hardware requirements — all useful stuff.
More Information on Deploying Vista
So far we have covered just one of the skills required for the Deploying Windows Vista section of the 70-622 exam — analyzing the business environment and selecting an appropriate deployment method.
I’m not going to cover the rest of the skills in detail, but I will provide you with some useful resources to get you started on them:
- How to install Windows Vista and How to prepare to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista are both good sources to start exploring.
- Vista Deployment Step-by-Step Guide is very thorough and will help you practice deploying Vista in a lab environment
- Troubleshooting General Operating System Deployment Issues is also a good place to start learning basic troubleshooting issues when it comes to deployment
I would also suggest checking out Pail Thurrott’s 3 part Windows Vista Installation Super Guide to practice with:
- Part 1: Introduction
- Part 2: Using the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor
- Part 3: Clean Install Windows Vista
Remember, the more you practice doing hands-on tasks, the easier it will be for you to remember the information and master content for the exam. I hope that the information in this and my previous articles will help you get a good start on the 70-622 and other Vista certification exams.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and I am looking forward to any feedback you have on it — feel free to leave me a comment below.
Best of luck in your studies.
Discussion
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