Exam Profile: Core Solutions of Microsoft Lync Server 2013 (70-336)
Date: Feb 11, 2013
The 70-336 exam is meant to be taken by those who are IT consultants and telecommunications consulting professionals who design, plan, deploy, and maintain solutions for unified communications (UC). Those who take this exam should be able to translate business requirements into technical architecture and design for a UC solution. It is recommended that you have a minimum of two years of experience with Microsoft Lync technologies and should be proficient in deploying Lync Server solutions for end users, endpoint devices, telephony, audio/video and web conferences, security, and high availability. Candidates should also know how to monitor and troubleshoot Lync Server using Microsoft tools.
In addition to the information above, you should be proficient with Active Directory Domain Services, data networks, and telecommunications standards and components that support the configuration of Lync Server. Candidates should be familiar with the requirements for integrating Lync Server with Microsoft Exchange Server and Office 365.
To be minimally qualified to take this exam, you should have experience making decisions concerning the design, implementation, and maintenance of the following: Central and branch office sites; Standard and Enterprise edition deployment; High availability and disaster recovery; Remote Access\External access; Enterprise voice; Unified Messaging; Conferencing; Persistent Chat; Data compliance; Client endpoints; Migration from previous versions of Lync.
After passing the Core Solutions of Microsoft Lync Server 2013 (70-336) exam, you complete the requirements for the Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE): Communications certification.
Exam Details
- Number of Questions: Approximately 45-55 questions (Since Microsoft does not publish this information, the number of exam questions may change without notice.)
- Types of Questions: This test format is multiple choice and multiple choice multiple answer. You may also see several scenario questions.
- Passing Score: 700
- Time Limit: 120 minutes
This passing score does not mean that you must answer 70 percent of the items correctly in order to pass the exam. The actual percentage varies from exam to exam and may be more or less than 70 percent. There is no penalty for guessing. No points are deducted for incorrect answers. If a question specifies that you must choose multiple correct answers, you must choose the exact number of correct answers specified in the question in order to earn a point for that item. Some of the questions on the exam may not count toward the calculation of your score. Microsoft will often throw a question in that is meant to gather data that will help them improve the exam.
Trouble Spots
As with any exam, it will vary from person to person as to what is deemed to be difficult. Be sure you are familiar with each of the topics in the exam objectives listed below.
- An SIP trunk is an IP connection that establishes a SIP communications link between your organization and an Internet telephony service provider (ITSP) beyond your firewall. An SIP trunk is typically used to connect your organization’s central site to an ITSP. It may also be possible to use SIP trunking to connect your branch site to an ITSP.
- Conferences are secure and confidential because users who join using the Lync client, Lync Phone Edition, or Lync mobile client are already authenticated using Active Directory.
- Lync includes support for Windows PowerShell, which can be used to automate many administrative tasks. If you understand how to use PowerShell, you can be more efficient and effective performing these tasks.
- Monitoring communication services is necessary in order to ensure that end users are getting the desired service. You can use the monitoring features in Lync to determine if performance or outages are affecting communication services. Synthetic transactions allow you to quickly and easily determine real-time communication services health by performing transactions on client computers that simulate typical actions performed by users (such as initiating conference calls). Synthetic transactions provide an accurate representation of the end user experience. You can also use the Active Monitoring feature. This feature monitors resources to ensure they are adequate to support the current demands, including pools, servers, and available network bandwidth. If you are also using System Center 2012 or System Center 2007 R2 Operations Manager, you can monitor Lync health. Operations Manager provides centralized alerting of health issues and logging so that you can resolve issues before they affect user performance or availability.
Preparation Hints
Review the Exam Objectives below and make sure that you are familiar with them. The Enterprise Voice & Online Services with Microsoft Lync Server 2013 exam is designed for those who have experience in this environment. Always check the Microsoft site for the specific exam you are going to take. In this instance, the site is http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-336.
There are many web sites and blogs that can help you to research topics, but be careful to fully research the information you read. It is not advisable to try to find sites that list questions and answers for several reasons. First, you don’t know if you will be asked a specific question and second, the answers given in a blog may be inaccurate and third, you need to understand the information to adequately prepare.
When taking the exam, read each question carefully. Microsoft is notorious for adding a lot of unneeded information in their questions. Make sure that when you click on a choice, that it is really marked. Be careful clicking anywhere on the screen. I found that by inadvertently clicking near the scroll bar on the right of the screen, I actually changed an answer. You get a single piece of paper and a marker for writing. You can use a small amount of time before you even start the exam to make notes once you enter the test area. Sometimes there is even a questionnaire at the beginning of the test that does not count against your test time. You can even use this time to write down notes, facts, tables or other information by taking your time between answers.
Recommended Study Resources
Free PDF: Microsoft Lync Server 2013 Step By Step for Anyone eBook
Microsoft also offers classroom training:
- 20336A: Core Solutions of Microsoft Lync Server 2013 (5 Days)
- 20336B: Core Solutions of Microsoft Lync Server 2013 (5 Days)
Exam Objectives
The exam objectives are broken up into four different categories. The 70-336 exam measures your ability to accomplish the technical tasks as stated by Microsoft listed below.
Plan and Design a Lync Topology (26 percent)
- Plan Lync Site Topology
- Plan Lync server support infrastructure
- Plan Lync Servers
- Design a Lync Server HA/DR solution
- Design Edge Services
May include but is not limited to: Evaluate user distribution for central and branch site design, Analyze business requirements for Persistent Chat ethical boundaries or room design, Associate workloads to business requirements, Analyze Business Requirements and plan LYNC Physical Architecture, Analyze Capacity Requirements and plan LYNC Physical Architecture, Analyze and Design Lync SIP domains
May include but is not limited to: Define Certificate requirements for internal servers, Analyze and Design load balancing, DNS, SQL, filestore, and Lync to support IPv6
May include but is not limited to: Define collocation of server roles, Analyze hardware requirements, Determine storage requirements for archiving and monitoring, Determine OS version requirements, Determine OS dependencies
May include but is not limited to: strategy for branch office scenarios, resiliency, SQL mirroring, central site failover, strategy for persistent chat, and strategy for voice applications
May include but is not limited to: Define certificate requirements for remote servers, Analyze and Design Firewall Settings, load balancing, DNS, reverse proxy and Analyze port requirements
Plan and Design Lync Features (25 percent)
- Design Conferencing
- Design Lync Remote and External Access
- Plan for Lync user experience
- Plan for clients and devices
- Plan migration from previous versions
- Plan end-user training for Lync Client Features
May include but is not limited to: WAC, coexistence strategy for legacy conferencing, conference access numbers, conferencing regions, conferencing lifecycle, conferencing policies
May include but is not limited to: federation, public IM connectivity, XMPP, mobile push notifications, Directors, remote user access
May include but is not limited to: contact list management, client version control, privacy, common area phone hotdesking, Music on Hold, Address Book Web search/download
May include but is not limited to: Lync mobility, Phone Edition or 3PIP devices, client authentication options, Analog devices, Lync users for VDI
May include but is not limited to: migration sequence, decommissioning of old servers, client co-existence, monitoring and archiving, server co-existence, conference migration strategy
May include but is not limited to: Enterprise Voice, Persistent Chat, Managing a Conference, Participate in a conference with Lync mobile app, Phone Edition, Lync WebApp
Deploy and Configure Lync (24 percent)
- Configure and publish topology
- Configure Conferencing
- Configure Lync Remote and External access
- Configure Persistent Chat
- Deploy and configure Clients and devices
- Migrate from previous versions of Lync
- Configure HA/DR
May include but is not limited to: mediation server collocation, trunks and gateways, Lync roles, multiple media gateway support, Add/remove server features, Deploy Edge Server
May include but is not limited to: PIN policy, regions and conference dial in access numbers, meeting configuration, conference policies
May include but is not limited to: Edge server, XMPP, PIC, Federation, reverse proxy
May include but is not limited to: Categories and Scope, Rooms Access, Server Policy, Legacy Endpoints, Add-ins
May include but is not limited to: Lync Client features, client policies, client security options, Analog or Phone Edition/3PIP policies, Mobile device policies, Lync users for VDI
May include but is not limited to: Consolidate legacy servers to a supported single version, Move legacy users, Migrate legacy configurations, conferences, and Response Groups or LIS, Move CMS or File Share Data
May include but is not limited to: pool failover, site failover, Invoke failover/failback, SQL mirroring, voice resiliency, Map User Experience to failover scenario
Manage Operations and Data Resiliency for Lync (25 percent)
- Troubleshoot the Lync Environment
- Manage the Lync Environment
- Verify Lync environment health
- Mitigate Data Loss
- Manage monitoring and archiving services
May include but is not limited to: Enable and collect logs, Recover from failed server build, Analyze event viewer, Enable OCSlogger tracing, Enable Best Practice Analyzer, Verify name resolution
May include but is not limited to: Run Lync BPA, Enable or move Lync users, Configure RBAC, Maintain Devices within the Enterprise, Configure Address Book, Manage RGS Delegated Administration
May include but is not limited to: Interpret Lync 15 Monitoring reports and identify potential issues, Configure Synthetic Transactions, Test Connectivity with Powershell Test Commandlet, Configure core reliability and media quality monitoring, Verify Service Health and CMS Replication Status
May include but is not limited to: Backup and restore application service data, filestore data and Contacts, Maintain and recover Lync 15 topology and LIS and RTC, Recover CMS
May include but is not limited to: Deploy Monitoring Reports, Configure CDR and Quality of Experience, persistent chat compliance, Archiving, Archiving with Exchange, Archiving Policies
Where to Go from Here
After you pass the Core Solutions of Microsoft Lync Server 2013 exam, you may want to take the Enterprise Voice & Online Services with Microsoft Lync Server 2013 (70-337) exam.