In the UK this means an increase from £88 to £99, so if you want to save that extra £11 then get your exams done before the end of June. Both of these prices are ex-VAT, so for those of you paying your own way through a certification track that means you will need to find an extra £13.20 from your own pocket, or £15.40 more than a year ago thanks to the VAT increase as well. If you already have pre-paid vouchers which are still valid, you should be able to use these for some time, but read the small print on the page linked below.

More information on prices for other countries, details of voucher eligibility and plenty of FAQs on the Microsoft page about the exam price rise.

UK MCTs will have already seen that their exam discount will increase at the same time by 5% which takes out a lot of the sting here, but early adopters in the training community will no longer get the super-bonus discount for taking exams within the first 90 days of release, which is not such great news.

I had put this off for so long because I thought I was weak on a couple of areas and needed some polish, and since everyone says it is one of the hardest I wanted to be sure to nail it.
But I was in the exam centre on Friday anyway (taking my CRM Applications exam MB2-632, also nailed) and I had second shot to back me up, so I figured "what the hell, even if I fail majestically at least I will know much more accurately what to expect on this one next time".

So I waltzed away with 889 in a shade under half the time available (105 minutes out of 215 – I know some do better than that but I was well pleased with the result). Finally gave me my MCSA:Messaging and only two more to go (293 and 294) to MCSE.

I had 47 questions, one sim and lots of pointless drag and drop exercise where you drag answers to boxes on a diagram. I hate the inaccuracy and slowness of the whole drag and drop nonsense – why not just give me a picklist on each diagram object with all the choices on so I can pick and change them quickly? Dragging onto an actual screenshot of some part of the GUI I can understand (just about) but not these pointless boxes and lists.
In one particularly bad example I could not drop onto the answer boxes, but had to drop things just above for it to work. When hovering in the right place the answer box changed to a blue background with the label "FALSE" – nicely reassuring hint from the interface designer that you are in the right place.

I got 100% on RRAS which I thought was a weak area of mine, I guess they asked the bits I did know (and there were not many questions in that area really, maybe 3 to 5, I can’t remember exactly)

Tips for anyone taking this (nothing you could not figure out from MS site but condensed version):

• Lots of IP subnet / gateway / routing between networks type questions (no surprise for anyone there). I only had a couple which required actual calculations of subnets / hosts, but lots required good understanding of the right choices to use and where to configure them on clients / servers.
• Lots of DNS, name resolution, additional records (A, CN, MX, SRV all that jazz), zone transfers, secondary zones, stub zones, using AD to replicate DNS round a domain and/or forest etc. So if you have only ever used "easy" AD-integrated DNS you need to read more about "real" DNS or you will fall down on this area
• Lots more IPSEC than I anticipated, and how to use Group Policy to implement and manage it.
• Lots of other stuff as well of course – DHCP, services, using network and performance monitoring tools…

Good luck to anyone else taking the 70-291 soon!

It seems that Microsoft have listened to the community and brought back their Second Shot offer much earlier than most people expected. Previously this seemed to run only once each year (albeit for several months at a time), and the last one only closed for taking exams the first time round at the end of May and the retakes by the end of June. Re-opening this in August 2008 and leaving it open right through to June 2009 seems to indicate that this will effectively become a permanent fixture, but you can’t just roll your retakes forward forever, you will have to use the second chance within the year-long programme, which seems perfectly fair.

The same launch page is being used as last time, although until today this was not live for the new offer and still showed the old information.

Microsoft Second Shot Exam Offer 2008

You have until June 30, 2009, to register, obtain an exam voucher, complete your first exam and retake your exam (if you did not pass on your first attempt).

There is no limit per person: If you register for this offer, you will receive one free retake for each paid exam that you take and fail.

To take advantage of this offer:

• Step 1: Register for Second Shot on the Microsoft Web site and receive an exam voucher number.

• Step 2: Schedule and pay for your initial exam through the Prometric Web site, call center, or test center.
  Note You must have the voucher number before you register.

• Step 3: Take the exam.

• Step 4: If you do not pass the exam on your first attempt, register for your free retake exam through the Prometric Web site, call center,* or test center by using the same voucher number. Then, take your Second Shot!
  Note You must wait one day after taking your initial exam before you can register for your retake exam. This time is required to enter test results into the system.

Which exams qualify for this Second Shot offer?
Any Microsoft Learning IT professional, developer, or Microsoft Dynamics exam qualifies for this offer.

You have to register here, and for that you need a Windows Live ID / MS Passport / hotmail account. That said, I can’t get the registration process to go through at all right now, I’m getting an error on the page with three different browsers when I try to update my profile . I’ll be trying again later, as I have some exams on the horizon and this could be useful.

I have to make a choice though, since I have a whole bunch of exam vouchers (from various MS Press exam books and other sources) and the way this works you can’t use those and the 2nd shot ‘voucher’ code at the same time.

So I can use up a voucher (which is already paid for a while ago and therefore is “free” in terms of this month’s bank balance), or I can pay real money (88 GBP at the moment for most MCP exams) on the basis that if I fail I get a retake for free. I did this last time and passed, so I would have been better off using a voucher, in hindsight. Overall, I suspect Microsoft are simply trying to encourage more people to take exams without so much fear factor, although whether having even more people with a MS certificate devalues them for existing badge holders is an unanswerable question.

Basically, you register for the deal with Microsoft, which gets you a voucher number. You then use this voucher number when you register and pay for your exam on the Prometric site as usual. If you fail the exam when you take it you can re-register to take the same exam again in a fixed timeframe.

The offer should be available from September 15th until January 31st, though whether that end-date is for the first try or your second attempt is not clear yet.

It seems that this will apply to all Microsoft professional and developer exams which are available through Prometric, but not Microsoft Office Specialist for example.

This offer will only be available from the 15th September, so you can’t register just yet, but there’s some information about the second shot offer on the Prometric website here which says:

Here’s how it works:

• Step 1: Register for Second Shot on the Microsoft site and receive an exam voucher number.
• Step 2: Using the voucher number, schedule and pay for your initial exam via Prometrics’s web site, call center or test center locations. (You must have the voucher number available prior to registering.)
• Step 3: Take your exam.
• Step 4: If you fail, register for your free retake exam via Prometric’s web site, call center or test center locations using the same voucher number. NOTE: Please wait one day after the failed exam to register to allow for test results to be entered into the system.

Thanks to Trika on her MS certification blog for giving us the advance warning of this coming up. It certainly avoids people being frustrated if they register for their exam the day before something like this gets announced. In another post she also talks about some of the changes following MS switching to using only Prometric for their exams now.

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