Exchange Server 2016 Certification

Back in March last year I passed the final Exchange 2013 exam to earn my MCSE: Messaging 2013 certification, I spent a lot of time reading websites, blogs, and watching videos all covered in the previous post. So little did I think in under a year I would be doing another Exchange exam! but I did…

I saw on the Born To Learn website in January that Microsoft Learning were offering free Beta Exam 345: Designing and Deploying Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 exams (Offer now expired), So I thought what's is the harm in doing a free exam, at the very least I’d get exam simulation experience and get an idea what Microsoft was going to be looking for. I booked for the last possible day in February the offer would allow me to book, because even thou I’ve played with the install and read the Exchange Team Blog post I’d not looked into Exchange 2016 to the same level as 2013…

Little did I appreciate that the material I used for 2013 was not there for 2016… So most of my learning material came from TechNet: Exchange 2016 Site, whilst there was other Exchange resource blogs that had started to post about 2016, it wasn’t the same level of material I used for 2013.

This was the first Microsoft Beta exam I’ve taken, so this was a new experience for me. All Microsoft exams are about taking your time, understand the questions and give the answer Microsoft are looking for, but this I can say this the first time I’ve used the full time allocated to an exam… all 180 minutes of the time. As everyone that has taken a Microsoft exam will know there is that feeling at the end of the exam where you “End the exam?” where you wait for the “Pass or Fail” message on screen… but this time as the exam was a beta I confirmed to end the exam I just got a message of “…Thanks for taking the exam…” or something like that, can’t fully remember the exact text on screen, whilst I knew I wasn’t going to get the result straight away I still got that strange feeling at the end of the exam. I just had the long 8 week wait for the results…

So in April by chance I longed into Microsoft Learning site and saw a banner at the top of the page…

Which obviously was really happy and surprised about as I’d not had any notification from Microsoft or Pearson VUE about the results. For an MCSE: Messaging you now only need the single 70-345 exam on top of you MCSA qualification.

Learning material is slowly being published now:

Pluralsight Course – Migrating to Exchange Server 2016
Exam Ref. 70-345 Designing and Deploying Microsoft Exchange Server 2016

Microsoft later emailed me to confirm the qualification and that I was a Charter Member for Exchange Server 2016