Few days ago, thought “what the heck” and booked in the 070-557 exam.
I’ve built enough labs and worked with the software for a while now and was feeling fairly confident I’d do okay.
The exam wasn’t what I expected or perhaps I over estimated what the questions would be. To be fair, the Ms Exam prep was pretty spot on for what you needed to understand.
The questions were fairly straight forward and if you’ve built a few Forefront systems, got them working correctly and read the guides published by Microsoft for Forefront I’d say you’d have a very decent chance of passing. The deployment and adminstration guide for Forefront and the user guides for Exchange and SharePoint where the most useful for real life and the exam prep.
You’ll have to have installed and configured the Exchange and SharePoint protection as well. You’ll need to understand some of the more obscure settings, but hey, it’s a test. If you don’t have access to test on these go an play on Ms excellent Virtual Labs they cover all three major components of the product. I spent a bit of time mucking around on the features in the virtual labs when my own labs weren’t available and found them excellent sandboxes to muck around in.
Not quite the full 1000, but close enough. A pass is a pass anyway 
Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Microsoft Forefront Client and Server – Configuration
That’s one tick off on the study list.
