Exam Profile MCITP 70-665: Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Administrator

Date: Oct 3, 2012

This article profiles the Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Administrator exam (MCITP 70-665), for IT and telecommunications professionals who design and plan solutions for unified communications. Pearson IT Certification provides a variety of exam preparation tools to help our customers in their quest for certification. As part of our service to you, we have developed this Exam Profile series. Each profile is developed based on the testing experience of one of our trainers or authors. You won’t get exact questions or answers, but you will get a real feel for the exam. Each profile describes question forms, trouble spots, hints for exam preparation, and recommendations for additional study resources. Find out what you can expect to see on the exam and how you can better prepare for it.

The 70-665 exam is meant to be taken by IT and telecommunications professionals who design and plan solutions for unified communications. Candidates should have a minimum of two years of experience with Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Office Communications Server 2007, or Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and related technologies. In addition, candidates should be proficient with Windows Server Active Directory 2008, data networks, and telecommunications components that support the configuration of Communications Server 2010.

You should know how to design and plan solutions for Lync Server 2010 for end users, endpoint devices, telephony, audio/video and web conferences, security, and high availability. Candidates should be familiar with the requirements for integrating Lync Server 2010 with Microsoft Exchange Unified Messaging.

After you pass the Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Administrator (70-665) exam, you complete the requirements for the Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP): Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Administrator certification.

Exam Details

Number of Questions: Approximately 55 questions (Since Microsoft does not publish this information, the number of exam questions may change without notice.)
Types of Questions: This test format is multiple choice and multiple choice multiple answer.
Passing Score: 700

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. Some of the new features and functionality in Microsoft Lync 2010 include the following:

Unified Experience

This includes instant messaging, voice, and audio, video, and Web conferencing. Now you can use one set of contacts across Lync 2010 and Office applications.

Connect and Collaborate

Find contacts and communicate more effectively with new features including pictures and location.

Simple, Essential, Reliable Conferencing

Collaborate with built-in desktop and application sharing, PowerPoint upload, and white boarding. You can schedule and join meetings with a single click in Microsoft Outlook or the meeting reminder.

Complete Enterprise Voice Features

You can give users the ability to work in the office, at home, or on the road. You can manage bandwidth utilization using Quality of Service (QoS) markings, which works well even on unmanaged networks like the Internet.

Powerful Deployment and Management Tools

The PowerShell-based foundation allows for administrative consistency with Exchange Server, Active Directory, and other Microsoft server products. You can improve security and administrative productivity with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) with built-in and customer-defined roles.

Extensibility

You can easily embed Communicator UI elements in your applications or build your client experience in .NET. You can also simplify deployment, operations, and interoperability with added features that improve provisioning, load-balancing, fail-over, and draining.

Preparation Hints

Review the Exam Objectives below and make sure that you are familiar with them. The Microsoft 2010, Administrator 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=70-665.

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 even use this time to write down notes, facts, tables or other information by taking your time between answers.

Recommended Study Resources

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Unleashed by Alex Lewis, Andrew Abbate and Tom Pacyk

Pass Guaranteed

Microsoft also has recommended classroom training:

Learning Plans and Classroom Training 10533AD: Deploying, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (5 Days)
10534AD: Planning and Designing a Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Solution (5 Days)
10534A: Planning and Designing a Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Solution (5 Days)

Exam Objectives

The exam objectives are broken up into four different categories. The 70-665 exam measures your ability to accomplish the technical tasks listed below.

The percentages indicate the relative weight of each major topic area on the exam. The higher the percentage, the more questions you are likely to see on that content area on the exam.

The objectives for Exam 70-665 as stated by Microsoft are as follows:

Designing a Topology for Lync Server 2010 (25 percent)

Design address book.

This objective may include but is not limited to: generation; distribution; filtering; normalization; size management

Design central and branch office topology.

This objective may include but is not limited to: designing sites and pools; placement of front-end servers; simple URLs; co-locating roles; designing browser-based access; Director role; capacity considerations

Design mediation topology.

This objective may include but is not limited to: pooled Mediation Servers; standalone mediation servers; media bypass; co-location with other front-end services; capacity considerations

Design archiving and Quality of Experience (QoE) monitoring topology.

This objective may include but is not limited to: designing QoE monitoring; placement of servers; Call Detail Recording (CDR); archiving policies

Design Edge topology.

This objective may include but is not limited to: sizing, security, network, and capacity considerations; deployment; federation; reverse proxy configuration; XMPP; PIC; firewall requirements; remote access

Design Call Admission Control (CAC).

This objective may include but is not limited to: sites; site links; exemptions; PSTN bypass; rerouting; CAC policies

Calculate bandwidth.

This objective may include but is not limited to: specify network requirements; calculate voice bandwidth; calculate video bandwidth; P2P vs. conference

Designing a Conferencing and Enterprise Voice Infrastructure (25 percent)

Design a dial plan.

This objective may include but is not limited to: formulate normalization rules and apply them as dial plan policies

Design for voice routing.

This objective may include but is not limited to: PSTN breakout points; PBX phones; trunk routing; media gateway; least cost/alternate routing

Define voice policies.

This objective may include but is not limited to: phone usage records; policy scope; decide level of access to certain features; private line; call parking

Define conference policies.

This objective may include but is not limited to: controlling usage; system capacity considerations

Design for Response Group Services (RGS).

This objective may include but is not limited to: workflow; contact objects; agents and queues; groups

Design for emergency services implementation.

This objective may include but is not limited to: Enhanced 911 (E911); SIP trunk emergency service providers; location policies; Location Information Service (LIS) wiremap; analyze network mapping

Plan for devices.

This objective may include but is not limited to: considerations for different endpoint types, including analog devices, common area phones, and standalone devices; DNS and DHCP requirements

Planning for External Dependencies and Migration (24 percent)

Plan for DNS implementation.

This objective may include but is not limited to: internal and external DNS; identify supported DNS records; identify supported DNS servers

Plan for PKI requirements.

This objective may include but is not limited to: public and private certificates; Subject Alternate Names (SANs)

Plan for Exchange Unified Messaging (UM).

This objective may include but is not limited to: specify requirements to integrate Exchange UM with Lync Server 2010; Exchange UM dependencies; design Exchange UM dial plans

Plan for migration.

This objective may include but is not limited to: configuration requirements; side-by-side migration; Edge migration; meeting considerations; client limitation considerations

Planning for High Availability and Business Continuity (26 percent)

Plan for high availability.

This objective may include but is not limited to: choosing Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) vs. Standard vs. Enterprise in high availability; number of servers and pools required; server redundancy

Plan for load balancing.

This objective may include but is not limited to: DNS; Hardware Load Balancing (HLB)

Plan for backup and restore.

This objective may include but is not limited to: partial recovery; database considerations; DBIMPEXP

Plan for disaster recovery.

This objective may include but is not limited to: bare metal recovery; spread pools; CMS reactivation

Plan for system monitoring.

This objective may include but is not limited to: synthetic transactions; identifying components to monitor; monitoring technologies such as Microsoft System Center Operations Manager

Plan for site resiliency.

This objective may include but is not limited to: SBA; backup registrar

Where to Go from Here

After you pass the Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Administrator (70-665) exam, you may want to take Exam 70-664: TS: Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Configuring exam.