CertTutor.net UPDATE, November 8, 2002

CertTutor.net Live! UPDATE—brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine Networkand CertTutor.net.
http://www.certtutor.net

CertTutor.net Live! UPDATE contains the best of CertTutor.net Live!, the Internet's number-one certification discussion board. CertTutor.net Live! UPDATE features interesting posts and shares valuable information about how to make the most of the forums. Enjoy!

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November 8, 2002—In this issue:

1. COMMENTARY

2. NEWS & VIEWS

3. ANNOUNCEMENTS

4. WHAT'S NEW FROM CERTTUTOR LIVE!

5. RESOURCES

6. NEW AND IMPROVED

7. CONTACT US
See this section for a list of ways to contact us.

1. COMMENTARY
(contributed by Will Willis, [email protected])

Recently, someone posted a message to the CertTutor.net Live! discussion forums about a colleague who claimed to have finished an exam in 10 minutes, passing easily. My first thought was that this person must have used brain-dump sites to cheat his way through the exam. But the more I thought about the claim, the more I realized that it accurately represents the attitudes of some IT professionals. Attitude, of course, directly affects the kind of professional you are.

Someone who brags about finishing an exam in 10 minutes probably did cheat. Microsoft exam questions especially require a lot of reading. Unless you're a true speed-reader, you simply can't get through the exam that fast—unless you've seen the questions before. Is an exam a speed-performance test? Of course not. If you're more concerned about racing through a project than about ensuring that you got it right, what does that say about your attitude? Your attitude says something about how you'll perform on the job, and it's exactly the kind of thing I look for when I interview candidates for a position. You're expected to complete tasks within a reasonable amount of time, but you're also expected to exhibit a degree of attention to detail. Arrogance clouds your ability to clearly think through even easy tasks and invites mistakes; it can also prevent you from seeking help when you need it, which can quickly escalate any problem.

The IT industry is a service industry. As a customer service representative within your organization, you must set aside your personal agenda and ego and focus on the company's needs. If you're arrogant, you're concerned about making yourself look good at the expense of others, which serves no useful purpose. Stereotypically, IT professionals lack social skills and personality, but as businesses increasingly rely on IT, relating well and working well with others is especially important. The ability to do so will separate you from those who can't or who choose not to.

Helping your colleagues gives you the opportunity to mentor people who don't know what you know. I often hear about junior administrators and entry-level IT professionals who can't get more-experienced IT personnel to teach them anything or show them what they're doing on a particular project. Superiors might give you the cold shoulder for several reasons, including "protecting their turf" (falsely thinking that doing so will make them indispensable to the company) and trying to give the impression that they know more than they do. Even if you're the only person who knows a particular process or task, your employer won't let you hold the company hostage over it. I've seen people who thought they were immune lose their jobs. In fact, I know of one company that abandoned a particular server product to go with something more "industry standard" because of the costs associated with having so much tied up in proprietary knowledge.

A successful IT professional understands that there's always more to learn and that inflating one's ego at the expense of others is a dead-end street. As you progress through your career, concentrate on doing things right and serving others before yourself. That strategy is what will make you indispensable.

2. NEWS & VIEWS

Cisco Systems announced two new certifications for professionals who specialize in wireless technologies. You can learn more about these certifications—the Cisco Wireless LAN Design Specialist and the Cisco Wireless LAN Support Specialist—at the Cisco Web site.
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/10/wwtraining/whats_new/wlan

You can also join a discussion about these new certifications at the CertTutor.net Live! Web site.
http://certtutor.net/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=76&threadid=35872

3. ANNOUNCEMENTS
(brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine and its partners)

Our popular IT Buyers' Directories (ITBDs) are online catalogs of the hottest vendor solutions around. Our latest ITBD highlights the solutions and services that will help you effectively manage your enterprises' storage. Download your copy today!
http://www.itbuynet.com/pdf/1102-itbd-storage.pdf

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4. WHAT'S NEW FROM CERTTUTOR LIVE!
CertTutor.net Live! is the Internet's number-one training and certification discussion board. Each week, CertTutor.net Live! receives thousands of posts about Windows XP, Windows 2000, Cisco Systems, and more. We've selected three of these posts to feature here in CertTutor.net UPDATE. To join in the conversation at CertTutor.net Live!, register at the following URL:
http://www.certtutor.net/registration/index.cfm

FEATURED THREADS

Think you know what you can and can't install on the Windows 2000 boot volume? Try this Question of the Day.
http://certtutor.net/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=15&threadid=35983

Does your Windows XP system—or the systems you support—have a back door? See this thread to learn about one way into some systems.
http://certtutor.net/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=11&threadid=36091

If you have any questions about the right hardware to purchase or where to find the best deals, don't miss our forum devoted to these topics. In this thread, Madog asks for CD-RW suggestions and gets an earful.
http://certtutor.net/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=53&threadid=35693

HOT THREADS

http://certtutor.net/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=10&threadid=36074

http://certtutor.net/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=39&threadid=35949

http://certtutor.net/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=36063

5. RESOURCES

See this site to learn how many people have achieved Microsoft certifications around the world.
http://www.microsoft.com/traincert/mcp/certified.asp

Do you need to repair icons or fonts? Are you tired of entering a password every time you boot your Windows XP workstation? Help has arrived. Tweak UI for XP is a free utility that can quickly cure common problems and unwanted behavior.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

This week's question will help you prepare for Exam 70-275: Installing, Configuring and Administrating Windows .NET Server 2003.

QUESTION
Windows 2000 supports RAID 5, which lets you create a fault-tolerant volume of data across multiple physical disks. RAID 5 stores data and parity alternatingly, so if one drive that's part of the volume fails, you can rebuild the data from the parity information. Which of the following are requirements of a software RAID 5 volume on Win2K? (Choose all that apply.)

ANSWER
The correct answers are A—You must have three or more physical disks to create a RAID 5 volume; B—The computer must be running Win2K Advanced Server, Win2K Datacenter Server, or Win2K Server; and D—All the disks in the RAID 5 volume must be dynamic disks. RAID 5 volumes support FAT and NTFS and require a minimum of three hard disks that are dynamic disks. You can't create RAID 5 volumes on Win2K Professional machines.

Many people don't realize that you can use RAID 5 on a FAT hard disk. Also, many people mistakenly believe that dynamic disks can function with the NTFS file system only. You can make a hard disk a dynamic disk before you perform any formatting or create any volumes; hence the formatting of the volume on the dynamic disk is irrelevant.

6. NEW AND IMPROVED
(contributed by Carolyn Mader, [email protected])

TechTrain announced a training program called PowerSQL, which provides 5 days of instructor-led training and 12 hours of structured eLearning training. Because of pretraining done at the student's pace, the training program covers topics covered in MS-2072: Administering a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database and MS-2073: Programming a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database in 5 days of classroom time. The PowerSQL training program costs $2995 and includes both Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) training kits (MS-2072 and MS-2073). Contact TechTrain at 704-357-8010, 800-216-4566, or [email protected].
http://www.techtrain.com

7. CONTACT US
Here's how to reach us with your comments and questions:

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