eLearning – Fundamentals of a Windows 2008 Network Infrastructure

I just completed my first  Microsoft online, eLearning collection – 6420: Fundamentals of a Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure and Application Platform.

There were ten 2-hour courses included in the collections. Since this was an overview of infrastructure particularly networking, much emphasis was placed on, protocols, routing, firewall, remote access and printing.

Each course included the standard:  explanatory slides, animated audio presentation to reinforce the topic, quizzes and a self test.    

Each course included a hands-on lab. The lab exercises are implemented as Hyper-V virtual machines. Performance is a little slow at times and can be frustrating especially when you’re trying to type command-line/powershell scripts. The slower the throughput, the more likely that the delay will result in typo errors in the VM. It would be great if you could copy and paste but that functionality is not available.

I’m enrolled through a program that Microsoft offered to Washington state. In the age of Bing and Google, there’s a lot of ways to get information. Some of it is false, misleading and a waste of time – read “community forums” and the “Microsoft MVP pissing matches” between individuals with no command or comprehension of the English language. Oops! That almost qualified as a rant on a different topic.

That being said, the courses were professionally edited and executed with accurate information however; I’m not convinced that I would pay list price to take the courses.

More information is at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/default.aspx. Use the search tool to narrow your search to a particular topic.