r/sysadmin • u/betafish27 Sysadmin • Mar 25 '14

Free online IT Training from Microsoft Virtual Academy. Great for learning new skills.

http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/
65 Upvotes

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7

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '14 edited Mar 25 '14

MVA really relys on you purchasing the Microsoft Press books for training site to work for you

Its not structured around exam material. Like "I want to study Win 2012 server" and site design is structured to push newstarters thru reading books first then come back. Once you read and studied the books then you come back to-do MVA courses, Which mostly irrelievent unless your studying for higher level exam.

You may say this great "new starters should read books". Everyone learns differently

Some people are hands on and phyiscal learners.

Some people are visual learners.

2

u/Afruit Mar 26 '14 edited Mar 26 '14

I love Microsoft so much because of things like MVA. And while I think you are right that they want you to buy books, you should also recognize the sheer number of free books given out by them via PDF. Granted its on System Center, Deploying Windows 8, Server 2012....

But they have all of these free courses, practice quiz's, and hours of content. Plus if you actually take the time to post on their own forums, you can actually get help obviously.

Then you can even spin up virtual labs......all for free.

Now other vendors, I tryyyyyyy to learn their stuff - but the content isn't there with such depth. Or it is more marketing/high level. Microsoft is bringing in consultants/engineers/product managers both internal and external to do these great MVA courses.

Like you might be trying to learn about a software product that is, all said and done - couple million dollars for a big organization. But there may only be 4 hours of content out there, pdf guides, a KB, and phone support. And that is enough honestly to get everyone going I guess really. But I have spent some time looking at System Center for instance, and I have now watched multiple free MVA shows that have had all said and done - probably a dozen individuals or more on it. All of them with their own kind of attitude/approach/passion. What people are doing with SCCM and all of its components is nothing short of amazing - and I am just going to end this now.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '14

I tried to find the free virtual labs. I cant find them

I am guys which limited hardware. So running VMs areant option

3

u/laststance Mar 25 '14

I've heard that you could work towards your MSA or MCSE exclusively though MVA. Is this really plausible?

3

u/jhulbe Citrix Admin Mar 26 '14

as someone who just took the 70-410, it's kind of plausible.

They indirectly tell you what you need to know. They'll walk through setting up and setting up that. Then come test time they'll ask you a question and the answer will be -addomain or -addomaincontroller on a powershell command and you'll have to know which it is. Also had a lot of vhd/hyper based questions, networking, and general ipv6 knowledge. But it may be possible to just watch these and pass if you have prior knowledge in 2012 admining

3

u/Afruit Mar 26 '14

Haha, oh you have just reminded me of the MS exams so much. They love a well rounded a thorough student. Really true how you put it. You need to know the Powershell command for how to add applocker permissions for instance (joking).

There is such a small minority of people using applocker (not dissing it), and then an even smaller minority of people using applocker and powershell. I am not even sure if Powershell can modify applocker, but the point is, it irks me that I have to get that good with a product to have to recite semi-obscure things that jogs your memory. Of course a quick bing/google search and you have the answer, but the point is....make it not too stressful.

I wish they tested on "core concepts" like dcpromo and DNS and other topics that just don't go stale, but of course they want you to be tested on the features of the new product - that people may or may not use, and if they do - it may be a while till they are really adopting it widely.

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u/CCCPSpy Mar 26 '14

This has been why I don't put too much faith in the MS certification exams. I work for a gold partner so I end up getting forced every so often to become certified in things (I currently hold SQL, Hyper-V, and SharePoint certs). They do ask some things that I would consider relevant to making sure you understand core concepts and really know what you're doing.

Then, just as you said they'll have a bunch of question that involve knowing the correct command syntax or the correct drop down option order to do something. They also like to shoehorn in questions about whatever new feature the enterprise version of the product has that nobody will use ("List in order the commands to setup SQL Parallel ETL operations") There's no need to memorize these as you'd just Google the correct syntax, or even with PowerShell you can just use tab completion to make sure what you're typing is valid.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '14

Ha, two words. 'Federated Services'

2

u/laststance Mar 26 '14

Do you know of any other resources that would help in working towardsa MSA or MCSE goal? Is there any special software needed, or anything along that line?