Exam Profile: Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, Configuring (70-400)
Date: Oct 6, 2011
The 70-400 exam is meant to be taken by those who have a minimum of one year of experience using Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 or System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) in medium-sized to large organizations. You are expected to have knowledge of and experience with the following:
- Active Directory
- Configuring Distributed Applications
- Using the Microsoft Windows PowerShell scripting engine to automate tasks with System Center Operations Manager 2007
- Configuring Management Packs
- Deploying Management Pack Solutions.
System Center Operations Manager is a software solution to meet the need for end-to-end service monitoring in the enterprise IT environment. Operations Manager provides an easy-to-use monitoring environment that can monitor thousands of servers, applications, and clients. This type of monitoring provides a comprehensive view of the health of an organization’s IT environment.
After you pass the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, Configuring exam, you complete the requirements for the following certification:
- Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): System Center Operations Manager 2007, Configuration.
You also earn credit toward the following certifications:
- Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA) on Windows Server 2003
- Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) on Windows Server 2003
In order to earn your Microsoft MCSA certification, you will be required to pass four exams (in any order):
- Two exams on networking systems
- One exam on client operating systems
- One elective exam
In order to earn your Microsoft MCSE certification, you will be required to pass seven exams (in any order):
- Four exams on networking systems
- One exam on client operating systems
- One exam on design
- One elective exam
The 70-400 is an elective exam.
Exam Details
- Number of Questions: Approximately 47 questions (Since Microsoft does not publish this information, the number of exam questions may change without notice.)
- Type of Question: This test format is multiple choice.
- Passing Score: 700/1000
- This passing score does not mean that you must answer 70 percent of the items correctly in order to pass the exam The actual percentage varies from exam to exam and may be more or less than 70 percent. There is no penalty for guessing. No points are deducted for incorrect answers. If a question specifies that you must choose multiple correct answers, you must choose the exact number of correct answers specified in the question in order to earn a point for that item. Some of the questions on the exam may not count toward the calculation of your score. Microsoft will often throw a question in that is meant to gather data that will help them improve the exam.
- Time Limit: 120 minutes
- How to Register: Prometric.com
Trouble Spots
As with any exam, it will vary from person to person as to what is deemed to be difficult. Be sure you are familiar with each of the topics in the exam objectives listed below.
System Center Operations Manager automates routine, redundant tasks, and provides intelligent reporting and monitoring to help increase efficiency and enable greater control of your IT environment. Role-based security, Active Directory integration, and new infrastructure elements make it easier to monitor, configure and deploy in complex environments. Support for high-availability features such as clustering and failover ensure the IT environment is always monitored.
System Center Operations Manager utilizes a single interface that shows state, health and performance information of computer systems. It also provides alerts generated according to some availability, performance, configuration or security situation being identified. It works with Microsoft Windows Server and Unix-based hosts. The basic concept of SCOM is that you install a software agent on the object to be monitored. The account used to install the agent must have administrative privileges on the targeted computers. The agent will report specific events or alerts generated by the applications executing on the monitored object. To install an agent, you must be an administrator, but the rights to view alerts can be granted to any valid user account. When an alert is detected, the agent forwards the alert to a central SCOM server. Some alerts may trigger email or text notification to the system administrator. If you use computer systems that are not in Active Directory, you can use the Operations console to search your environment for manageable objects and then deploy an agent to any object that you want to monitor. This process of searching your environment is called discovery. Performing a discovery on your network allows you to see all manageable objects including those of which you may not be aware.
The Discovery Wizard is built in to SCOM and allows you to easily discover objects. It does not show systems that the management group is already monitoring. If you are doing a phased rollout of your management group, you can run the wizard to add new systems to the group. Also, after your initial deployment, you can use the Discovery Wizard to add newly installed computers to be managed. It may be that you do not want to discover and install an agent on all objects in your network, so you also have the option of manually installing agents. The communication channel between server and agent is encrypted.
Operations Manager supports the collection of SNMP messages. SNMP messages can be used similar to any other event for the creation of alerts. Operations Manager also supports the redirection of Syslogs to the management server for analysis and alerting.
The term Management Pack refers to a set of filtering rules specific to some monitored operating systems, applications, and other technology components. A Management Pack contains best practice knowledge to discover, monitor, troubleshoot report on, and resolve problems for a specific technology component. Management Packs include health models that will analyze the performance, availability, configuration and security inputs, as well as the status of related components, to determine the overall status of components. Management Packs are available for Microsoft and third party operating systems, applications, and devices. Microsoft provides Management Packs for more than 60 Microsoft products and Windows components. Microsoft also has Management Packs for more than 50 Microsoft technologies, including the following: Exchange Server, Windows Active Directory, SQL Server, Windows XP/Windows Vista, Office client/Office servers and Internet Information Server. Microsoft partners have created Management Packs for various hardware platforms, non-Microsoft applications, and even non-Microsoft operating systems, such as Linux and UNIX. To read more information on which partner Management Packs are available, you can go to the Management Pack catalog at the Operations Manager Web site.
Preparation Hints
Review the Exam Objectives below and make sure that you are familiar with them. The Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, Configuring exam is designed for those who have experience in this environment. Always check the Microsoft site for the specific exam you are going to take. In this instance, the site is http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-400. Microsoft also has a white paper about SCOM.
There are many web sites and blogs that can help you to research topics, but be careful to fully research the information you read. It is not advisable to try to find sites that list questions and answers for several reasons. First, you don’t know if you will be asked a specific question and second, the answers given in a blog may be inaccurate and third, you need to understand the information to adequately prepare.
When taking the exam, read each question carefully. Microsoft is notorious for adding a lot of unneeded information in their questions. Make sure that when you click on a choice, that it is really marked. Be careful clicking anywhere on the screen. I found that by inadvertently clicking near the scroll bar on the right of the screen, I actually changed an answer. You get a single piece of paper and a marker for writing. You can use a small amount of time before you even start the exam to make notes once you enter the test area. Sometimes there is even a questionnaire at the beginning of the test that does not count against your test time. You can use this time to write down notes, facts, tables, or other information rather than taking your time between answers.
Recommended Study Resources
70-400: System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed by Kerrie Meyler, Cameron Fuller, John Joyner and Andy Dominey (Paperback - Feb 29, 2008)
Exam Objectives
The exam objectives are broken up into five different categories.
Configuring System Center Operations Manager 2007 (15 percent)
- Configure notification.
- Manage roles.
- Configure System Center Operations Manager options.
- Discover and deploy agents within a trusted Active Directory forest.
- Discover and deploy agents to systems not using Active Directory.
Deploying and Configuring Management Packs (28 percent)
- Import a Management Pack.
- Configure overrides.
- Create a self-tuning threshold.
- Migrate a Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Management Pack to System Center Operations Manager 2007.
- Configure diagnostics and recoveries for a rule or a monitor.
Building and Deploying Custom Management Packs (21 percent)
- Configure security options.
- Configure discovery for Management Packs.
- Create monitors and rules.
- Create a distributed application.
- Create a synthetic transaction.
Maintaining System Center Operations Manager (23 percent)
- Maintain a System Center Operations Manager infrastructure.
- Create views.
- Create tasks.
- Fail over from Root Management Server (RMS).
- Backup and restore System Center Operations Manager.
- Manage and maintain reports.
Configuring Client Monitoring (13 percent)
- Configure Audit Collection Service (ACS).
- Configure Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM).
- Configure Collective Client Monitoring (CCM).
- Configure Business Critical Client Monitoring (BCCM).
Where to Go from Here
After you pass the System Center Operations Manager 2007, Configuring exam, you may want to take Exam 70-401:Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007, Configuring.
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