Jeff's Citrix certification preparation blog

I took the 1Y1-A05 Implementing Citrix XenApp for Windows Server 2008 beta exam yesterday afternoon. I have to admit, it was ‘fun and exciting’ to take another exam since it has been a few years since I sat for my last exam. I wasn’t nervous at all; I have never really been one to get nervous for exams anyway, no matter how important they are.

The testing area had a great view of downtown Denver, from the 25th floor. It was clean and quiet. They were very serious about exam security, too, which was good to see. Much more so than when I’ve taken exams in the past. My biggest complaint is that they were not brewing any coffee!

Anyway, on to the exam. It was 179 questions and I had three and a half hours to finish. Of course, keep in mind this was the beta. The live exam will, of course, have less questions and time. I made the mistake of taking too much time for the first 100 questions and then I had to fly through the last 79. If I fail, that will be my excuse - ha! I think I did pretty good, actually. It really helped that I have been working on the new 1Y0-259 exam because a lot of the stuff is the same, just with new names for things (see next paragraph). Overall, I was happy with the quality of this exam, but I really expected more realistic scenarios, since real Citrix engineers helped write this one. I’m not sure what I was expecting; maybe some lab-type simulations or something. There was some drag-n-drop stuff, but I felt it was pretty easy, even though I had never configured a couple of the scenarios that were presented.

There was one question in particular that stood out to me. It really made me think back to my days as a Systems Administrator, which is what I think more of the questions should do. Throughout most of the exam I found myself trying to remember what I read in the courseware or admin guide, or questions that I have written, more than actually trying to analyze and reason out what I would do or did in a real environment. But remember, this view is coming from someone who writes questions for a living. I think a true Sys Admin would probably find him/herself mentally visioning the questions and scenarios.

Of course, I have to be careful what I divulge, but the main differences between this exam and older PS exams that I saw were: This one was heavy on streaming - know it inside and out; the new names of the management consoles and ICA clients; you need to know basic networking command-line tools like telnet and netstat. That’s what I remember for now, but if I remember more later I’ll update.

Things that were the same: Lots of printing questions — Make sure you know print policies, what their configurations are, when to use them and why. I had to rush through a lot of these because they were in that last 79 quesitons, but I think I still did OK; Know your ports; Heavy on Secure Gateway and Web Interface configurations; Some about the basics like publishing apps, load evaluators, the data store and databases, zones, farms, etc.

Without going into a short novel with this post, that just about covers it. If I think of anything else I’ll post it later.

I don’t think I did too bad except for the stuff that I haven’t dealt with very much, mainly application streaming. I’ll write more tomorrow.

Do you actually read the NDA before taking an exam? Well, if not, here’s your chance to read about Citrix’s exam policies and candidate conduct online. Citrix has a page for each.

The candidate conduct policy page is the NDA that you see and must agree to when you go take a Citrix exam at one of the testing centers. It basically says you must agree not to cheat and what they will do if you do cheat. It says that they can classify a score as indeterminate if they find anything weird about your exam. In other words, if you finish the exam in five minutes and score 100%, your score is probably going to be disqualified. Of course, it’s not that simple, but beware, they will take action against cheaters.

The exam policies page is short and gives information about beta exams, exam retakes, and disabled/special testing requirements.

So these are just a couple more resources from Citrix Education to help testing candidates prepare and feel comfortable for a live Citrix exam.

Citrix Education does a great job of preparing us for their live exams with exam enablement guides. Now they have taken it a step further and are producing beta faqs, or what could be called “beta enablement guides.”

The beta faq that I’m looking at (the 1Y1-A05) is very similar to the exam enablement guides. It has all of the information you need about the exam, such as How many questions, How much time, How do I register, etc. It goes as far as giving you the topics and how much weight they carry, and lists resources to help you prepare for the beta exam. A very thorough guide for a beta exam.

In my opinion, this is one more resource that shows that Citrix Education is striving to be one of the best vendor certification programs out there. They may already be.

I know this is a little off-topic, but hey, it can’t be all work no play, huh? Anyway, I purchased my tickets for the 12:01am showing of Star Wars: The Clone Wars in downtown Denver. I’m looking forward to it. Anyone else going this weekend?

I signed up to take the 1Y1-A05 Implementing Citrix XenApp for Windows Server 2008 next Monday afternoon. I am excited to take it as it will be the first exam I’ve taken in years. When I visited Citrix last month, Sierra looked up my exam activity and if I recall correctly I think she said 1Y0-306 was the last exam I took. That was two or three years ago, before I started farming out the practice exams to other authors. I’ll share what I can about the beta sometime next week.

While working on the Publishing Applications and Content section of the new 1Y0-259 practice exam, I came across this awesome guide in the Citrix Knowledge Center, explaining application isolation in depth. It’s called, very appropriately, Application Isolation Environments Explained. It is Knowledge Base article CTX106868. I used it almost exclusively for my questions for the practice exam and just thought I’d share it with you if you didn’t already know it exists.

I finally got around to checking out SpeedScreen Browser Acceleration on a Presentation Server. Below is an image of the SBA Properties screen. As you can see, when Compress JPEG images to improve bandwidth is selected, the Adjust compression level based on available bandwidth selection is available. I don’t see a Determine when to compress option like I mentioned in a previous article, but I assume that it is the same thing.

One other thing to note: The Image compression levels.

I just received an invitation today to participate in the 1Y1-A05 Implementing Citrix XenApp for Windows 2008 beta exam.

The topics being covered in this new exam include: Understanding the Citrix Architecture, Licensing and Installing Citrix XenApp, Installing and Configuring Web Interface, Configuring ICA Sessions, Managing Applications, Managing Citrix XenApp Policies, Managing and Maintaining the Server and Farm, Configuring Printing, and Troubleshooting Citrix XenApp.

For anyone who didn’t receive an email but is interested in taking it, this beta exam is available through Pearson Vue for $150.00.

I’ll blog more about it after I take it.

You need to know what both client-to-server and server-to-client content redirection are for the 1Y0-259 exam. To help you keep from confusing them, here’s a brief summary of each:

Client-to-server redirection is configured to allow a file on a client device to be opened using a published application on a XenApp Server. For example, if a user receives an email with a PDF attached to it but the user does not have a PDF reader installed on their computer, client-to-server content redirection can be configured so that the published PDF reader in the server farm launches automatically when the user attempts to open any file with a .PDF extension.

Server-to-client redirection is kind of the opposite, except it only works with multimedia applications. It forces applications, such as web browsers, Real Player, or QuickTime, to run on the client device and not the server. This frees up resources on the XenApp Servers. It is good to configure this when there is heavy URL clicking going on. An example of where this would come in handy would be a media company where the users are constantly receiving emails with URLs that launch web browsers and videos. By putting the load back on the users’ computers, the performance of other applications in the server farm isn’t degraded.

Hopefully, that gives you a helpful review of each type of content redirection before you go sit for the 1Y0-259 exam.

Elias Khnaser has released two new Computer Based Training DVDs:

VMWare Infrastructure 3: ESX 3.5 & VirtualCenter + Site Recovery Manager

and

Microsoft System Center - Virtual Time Manager

Elias is giving Citrixxperience members a 10% discount! Use the following discount code at checkout for 10% off of your purchase: VMIEVC10

Please click on the product links above for more information about each product and to purchase.

I mentioned the other day that you can find me on Twitter, a micro blogging platform where you can send and receive updates to and from friends, colleagues, anyone really. Well, starting today, I am sending out one Citrix Exam Question of the Day via Twitter, so you’ll need to sign up if you are interested in getting those questions.

After you sign up, go to http://twitter.com/JeffRohrer and click Follow. You can have updates sent to your phone, application clients, or just check the web site.

I will try to be faithful about sending out one question each morning, Monday through Friday. I will then send out the answer later that afternoon. If I forget, please remind me. Hope to see you there!

Quick update: Since twitter only allows 140 characters, the questions and answers will have to be sent out in multiple updates. Also, the questions have to be edited to be short enough to fit, so they may be worded kind of funny. Sorry, I’ll see how this works out. Let me know your thoughts.

During my visit to Citrix last month I was planning on asking them what they are doing, if anything, about braindumps. To my surprise, it was one of the first subjects that they brought up. I didn’t even have to ask, and that makes me feel confident that they are serious about the subject.

And they are serious: They have hired a cheating detection and prevention company which has already helped them catch a “significant number” of cheaters, according to Larry Sweeney,  Director of Content Development at Citrix, and those cheaters were mailed letters letting them know that their certifications had been revoked. How’s that for being proactive?

They are also having discussions with Robert Williams and Taylor Ripley at Certguard to identify the sites that are distributing Citrix braindumps. They are working alongside companies like Microsoft to ultimately shut down braindump sites.

Most people know that Microsoft won a settlement from Testking last year, but what most people don’t know is that that was just the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft is not done, and neither is Citrix. According to sources, braindump sites’ days are numbered, and anyone using those sites are putting their certifications in jeopardy.

So as the debate still rages on about whether or not it’s OK to use braindumps, it’s getting clearer and clearer that those who are pro-braindump/cheating are on the losing side of the battle.

I mentioned in a post last week that I visited Citrix Education at the Citrix campus in Ft. Lauderdale, FL a few weeks ago. The meeting was mainly an introduction between some of the folks at Citrix Education and I. Citrixxperience has been running for seven years now, and although I have had some email contact with them, we had never met in person until now.

The meeting was very encouraging, as Sierra Hampton, the Exam Development Manager, told me that Citrix has given Citrixxperience a ‘nod’ of approval. In other words, they accept the practice exams from Citrixxperience as non-braindumps and good material to study with for the real exams.

One very interesting note is that one of their biggest concerns is braindumping and cheaters. I’ll write more about it later, but I will tell you that they are very serious about their involvement in shutting down the braindump sites and penalizing anyone who uses braindumps (yes, they have ways to tell and have already started).

Anyway, I’ll write more tidbits about our meeting later. I want to thank the people at Citrix Education again, especially Sierra (mentioned above), Larry Sweeney, and Julieann Scalisi for their time and hospitality. I look forward to seeing you all again.

I know this information is old news to some, but I thought for any newbies out there it might be helpful. You can download free betas and developer editions of XenApp, Presentation Server and other software from MyCitrix.

Browse to MyCitrix.com and register a free account. When you are logged in, hover over Choose a Toolbox and click on Product Previews / Beta Releases. There you’ll see a few downloads. This is a good thing for any of you that want to “play around” with the products while studying for the exam. Beware, the downloads are large, so it might take a lot of time and bandwidth. Have fun!