Pass Your Microsoft 70-980 Exam Easy!

Microsoft 70-980 (Recertification for MCSE: Server Infrastructure) exam dumps vce, practice test questions, study guide & video training course to study and pass quickly and easily. Microsoft 70-980 Recertification for MCSE: Server Infrastructure exam dumps & practice test questions and answers. You need avanset vce exam simulator in order to study the Microsoft 70-980 certification exam dumps & Microsoft 70-980 practice test questions in vce format.

An Introduction to the Microsoft 70-980 Exam

The Microsoft Private Cloud, built upon the powerful combination of Windows Server and the System Center suite, represented a significant step in bringing the efficiency and agility of cloud computing into the on-premises data center. The Microsoft 70-980 exam was a unique and important credential in this ecosystem. Titled "Recertification for MCSE: Private Cloud," it was not a standard entry-level exam. Instead, it was specifically designed for seasoned professionals who already held the MCSE: Private Cloud certification for the 2012 wave of products and needed to validate their skills on the new features introduced in the R2 releases.

Although the 70-980 exam is now retired, the technologies and architectural shifts it covered were a critical evolutionary step towards the modern hybrid cloud offerings from Microsoft, such as Azure Stack and Azure Arc. For professionals seeking to understand the lineage of Microsoft's cloud strategy or those managing mature but critical on-premises environments, the topics of the 70-980 exam remain a valuable area of study. This five-part series will serve as a detailed guide, starting with the core concepts of the Microsoft Private Cloud and the specific focus of this recertification exam.

Understanding the Microsoft Private Cloud Concept

To prepare for the 70-980 exam, it was essential to first have a deep understanding of the Microsoft Private Cloud philosophy. The goal was to transform a traditional, static data center into a dynamic, automated, and self-service infrastructure, mirroring the capabilities of a public cloud like Microsoft Azure. This was achieved by integrating several key technologies. The foundation of the private cloud was the "fabric," which consisted of the compute, storage, and networking resources, all managed and virtualized by Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).

On top of this fabric, the private cloud provided a layer for Service Delivery and Automation. This was handled by System Center Service Manager (SCSM), which provided a self-service portal and service catalog, and System Center Orchestrator, which provided the powerful workflow engine to automate the fulfillment of service requests. For example, a user could request a new virtual machine from the portal, and Orchestrator would automatically provision it in VMM without any manual intervention from an administrator.

The final pillar was Infrastructure Monitoring, provided by System Center Operations Manager (SCOM). SCOM offered deep, health-aware monitoring of the entire private cloud stack, from the physical hardware up to the applications running on the virtual machines. The 70-980 exam was focused on the new features and enhancements that the R2 product wave brought to each of these core pillars, improving the performance, scalability, and hybrid capabilities of the entire solution.

Who was the Ideal Candidate for the 70-980 Exam?

The 70-980 exam was not for newcomers. It was specifically a recertification exam, and its ideal candidate was an experienced IT professional who had already proven their expertise by earning the MCSE: Private Cloud certification on the Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 platform. These were typically senior-level data center administrators, infrastructure architects, or cloud engineers who were responsible for the design, deployment, and ongoing management of their organization's private cloud infrastructure.

The purpose of the exam was to ensure that these certified professionals stayed current with the latest technology. It tested their knowledge of the new and improved features introduced in the "R2" releases of Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012. Therefore, the candidate was expected to already have a deep understanding of the original 2012 products. The exam focused exclusively on the delta—what was new, what had changed, and how these new features could be leveraged to build a better private cloud.

This unique focus meant that the candidate needed to have a continuous learning mindset. They were the experts within their organizations, and this recertification was the official validation from Microsoft that their skills were up-to-date and that they were qualified to implement the latest advancements in the Microsoft private cloud stack.

Key R2 Features Covered in the 70-980 Exam

The 70-980 exam centered on the significant advancements made in the R2 wave of products. A key area of focus was the updates to the virtualization platform, Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V. This included major new features like Generation 2 virtual machines, which offered a more modern virtual hardware profile with benefits like UEFI firmware and faster boot times. Other key Hyper-V enhancements included the ability to resize a virtual hard disk (VHDX) while the VM was running and the introduction of Storage Quality of Service (QoS) to control disk IOPS for VMs.

On the storage front, the R2 release brought significant improvements to Storage Spaces, most notably the introduction of automated storage tiering. This allowed administrators to create storage pools with a mix of fast solid-state drives (SSDs) and slower hard disk drives (HDDs) and have the system automatically move frequently accessed "hot" data to the SSD tier for better performance.

Networking also saw major updates with Hyper-V Network Virtualization, including the introduction of a built-in software gateway for creating secure site-to-site VPN connections between virtual networks and physical networks. The System Center 2012 R2 suite also saw numerous improvements. VMM gained support for all the new Hyper-V features, and Orchestrator introduced a powerful new PowerShell-based automation engine called Service Management Automation (SMA). The 70-980 exam was designed to test a candidate's practical knowledge of these and other R2-specific enhancements.

Navigating the 70-980 Exam Format and Objectives

Being familiar with the exam's format was a critical first step in preparing for the 70-980 exam. As a recertification exam, it was typically shorter and more focused than the initial, longer exams required for the original MCSE credential. It generally consisted of 40 to 50 questions, with a time limit of around 120 minutes. The question formats were varied and could include standard multiple-choice, drag-and-drop, and scenario-based questions that required the candidate to apply their knowledge of the new R2 features to solve a specific problem.

The official skills measured, or objectives, for the 70-980 exam were organized around the main phases of a private cloud lifecycle, but with a specific focus on the R2 feature set. The first major domain was "Configure and Deploy a Private Cloud." This covered the new capabilities in the fabric, such as deploying Generation 2 VMs, configuring storage tiering, and implementing the new networking features using Virtual Machine Manager R2.

The other major domains included "Monitor and Operate a Private Cloud" and "Configure Application and Service Delivery." These sections tested the new features in Operations Manager R2, Data Protection Manager R2, Service Manager R2, and Orchestrator R2. The key to success was to meticulously review these objectives and understand that every question would relate back to a feature or capability that was new or significantly changed in the R2 release.

The Business Value of the R2 Private Cloud and Recertification

Understanding the business value of the R2 updates provides important context for the technical skills tested in the 70-980 exam. The R2 wave of products delivered tangible benefits to organizations running a Microsoft Private Cloud. The enhancements in Hyper-V and Storage Spaces, such as storage tiering and online VHDX resize, led to significant improvements in storage performance and efficiency. This allowed businesses to get more performance out of their existing hardware and to manage their storage more flexibly, leading to lower capital and operational costs.

The new networking features, particularly the software-defined networking gateway, were a major step towards enabling hybrid cloud scenarios. This allowed businesses to seamlessly and securely connect their on-premises private cloud with virtual networks in the public cloud (Microsoft Azure) or with their branch offices. This provided a new level of agility and flexibility in how they could design and deploy their applications.

A professional who passed the 70-980 exam was the key to unlocking these benefits. Their recertification demonstrated that they had the up-to-date skills to implement these new features correctly and to advise their organization on how to best leverage the improved performance, storage efficiency, and hybrid capabilities of the R2 platform. This made them a more valuable asset, capable of driving innovation and efficiency in the data center.

Initial Steps for Your 70-980 Exam Preparation

To begin a structured preparation for the 70-980 exam, a few initial steps were crucial. The very first action was to download the official "Skills Measured" document from the Microsoft Learning website. This document was the definitive blueprint. Given that this was a recertification exam, the key was to use this blueprint to identify every new R2 feature that was in scope. The preparation should have been focused exclusively on these delta features.

Next, it was essential to gather the right study materials. For this exam, the single most important resources were the "What's New" articles on the archived Microsoft TechNet library. There were specific "What's New in R2" articles for Windows Server, Hyper-V, VMM, SCOM, and all the other System Center components. These articles were the primary source material for the exam content.

Finally, and most critically, was the need to build a hands-on lab environment running the R2 versions of the software. Theoretical knowledge of the new features was insufficient. You needed to have practical, hands-on experience deploying and configuring them. This meant building a lab with Windows Server 2012 R2 and the full System Center 2012 R2 suite. The process of installing and configuring the new features, such as storage tiering or a Gen 2 VM, was the single most effective study method for the 70-980 exam.

Deep Dive into Fabric Management Updates for the 70-980 Exam

Welcome to the second part of our comprehensive series on the Microsoft 70-980 exam. In the first installment, we established the context of this unique recertification exam, focusing on its role in validating skills on the "R2" wave of Microsoft's private cloud stack. With that foundational understanding, we will now delve into the technical heart of the private cloud: the fabric. The fabric, comprising the compute, storage, and networking resources, saw some of the most significant updates in the R2 release.

This part will provide a deep dive into the fabric management updates that were a core component of the 70-980 exam. We will explore the key new features introduced in Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V, such as Generation 2 virtual machines. We will also cover the substantial improvements to software-defined storage with Storage Spaces and the advancements in software-defined networking with Hyper-V Network Virtualization. Finally, we will examine how System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) was enhanced to manage this newly capable fabric.

What's New in Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2

The foundation of the Microsoft private cloud's compute fabric is Hyper-V, and the Windows Server 2012 R2 release brought a host of powerful new features that were a major focus of the 70-980 exam. The most significant of these was the introduction of Generation 2 virtual machines. Unlike Generation 1 VMs, which emulated legacy hardware, Generation 2 VMs used a modern, software-based set of virtual hardware. This provided several key benefits that you needed to know for the exam.

Generation 2 VMs used UEFI firmware instead of a traditional BIOS, which enabled features like Secure Boot to enhance security. They could also boot from a virtual SCSI controller, which was not possible for Generation 1. This new architecture resulted in faster boot times and improved performance. Another key enhancement was the ability to resize a virtual hard disk (VHDX) that was attached to a running virtual machine, providing much greater flexibility for storage management without requiring downtime.

Other notable improvements included Storage Quality of Service (QoS), which allowed administrators to set maximum and minimum IOPS limits for a VM's virtual disks to prevent a "noisy neighbor" problem. Enhanced Session Mode provided a much richer remote console experience, allowing redirection of local devices like printers and USB drives. A deep, practical understanding of these new Hyper-V features was a fundamental requirement for the 70-980 exam.

Configuring and Managing Storage Spaces and Tiered Storage

The 70-980 exam placed a strong emphasis on the significant improvements made to software-defined storage in the R2 release. Windows Server Storage Spaces is a technology that allows you to virtualize storage by grouping industry-standard disks into storage pools. The most important new feature introduced in Windows Server 2012 R2 was automated storage tiering. This feature allowed you to create a storage space on a virtual disk that was backed by a mix of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) and high-capacity hard disk drives (HDDs).

The system would then automatically and transparently move the data "blocks" or "slabs" between these two tiers based on their access frequency. Frequently accessed, or "hot," data would be automatically moved to the fast SSD tier, while less frequently accessed, or "cold," data would be moved to the HDD tier. This provided the performance benefits of SSDs for the most active data, while still leveraging the cost-effectiveness of HDDs for bulk storage.

To configure this, you would create a storage pool containing both SSD and HDD disks, create a virtual disk with storage tiers, and then create a volume on that disk. The 70-980 exam required you to understand the steps for this configuration and the benefits it provided for workloads like Hyper-V and SQL Server. This feature was a major step forward in making enterprise-grade storage performance available on commodity hardware.

Implementing and Managing Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV)

Software-defined networking was a key pillar of the Microsoft private cloud, and the R2 release brought important enhancements that were a focus of the 70-980 exam. Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV) is the technology that allows you to create isolated, multi-tenant virtual networks on top of a shared physical network infrastructure. It decouples the virtual network from the physical network, allowing you to create complex network topologies in software.

A major new feature in the R2 release was the introduction of a built-in, multi-tenant software gateway. This HNV Gateway was a crucial component that provided connectivity between the virtual networks and the physical world. It could act as a NAT device, a forwarding gateway, and, most importantly, a site-to-site VPN gateway. This allowed tenants to securely connect their on-premises virtual networks to their physical corporate networks or to virtual networks in other data centers.

System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager played a central role in simplifying the deployment and management of HNV. VMM R2 provided a centralized point of control for defining virtual networks, connecting VMs to them, and deploying and configuring the HNV Gateway. The ability to use VMM to orchestrate the entire software-defined networking stack was a key skill tested on the 70-980 exam.

What's New in Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012 R2

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) is the central management tool for the entire private cloud fabric. The 70-980 exam required you to have a deep understanding of the new features introduced in the VMM 2012 R2 release. A primary role of the new release was to provide full support for all the new capabilities in Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V. This meant that you could use VMM to create and manage Generation 2 virtual machines, perform online VHDX resizing, and configure storage QoS policies.

VMM 2012 R2 also introduced several new capabilities of its own. It gained the ability to manage the entire lifecycle of physical servers through bare-metal deployment. You could provide VMM with a physical server that had no operating system, and VMM would automatically deploy Windows Server and the Hyper-V role, and add the server as a managed host in your fabric. This was a powerful automation feature.

The networking capabilities were also significantly enhanced. VMM R2 introduced the concept of a Logical Switch, which allowed you to create a standardized network configuration template that could be consistently applied to all the hosts in a cluster. It also provided the management interface for deploying and configuring the new HNV Gateway. A solid understanding of how VMM R2 acted as the "fabric controller" was a core competency for the 70-980 exam.

Deploying and Managing Scale-Out File Servers (SOFS)

A key architectural pattern for providing highly available storage for a Hyper-V private cloud is the Scale-Out File Server (SOFS). The 70-980 exam required you to understand the role of the SOFS and how it was managed in an R2 environment. A SOFS is a clustered file server role running on Windows Server that is designed to provide continuous availability for application storage. It uses the SMB 3.0 protocol to provide high-performance and reliable access to file shares.

In a private cloud context, you would create a SOFS cluster and store all of your Hyper-V virtual machine files (VHDX and configuration files) on the file shares hosted by that cluster. This decoupled the compute layer (the Hyper-V hosts) from the storage layer. All Hyper-V hosts in a cluster would access the same shared storage, which enabled features like live migration of virtual machines.

System Center 2012 R2 VMM could integrate with and manage the SOFS. You could add the SOFS cluster to VMM as a storage provider. VMM could then discover the file shares on the cluster and allow you to provision and manage virtual machines directly on those shares. This tight integration between VMM and the SOFS provided a unified management experience for the entire compute and storage fabric, a key solution pattern for the 70-980 exam.

Integrating and Managing Converged Networks

To simplify the physical network infrastructure and reduce costs, many private cloud deployments used a "converged network" architecture. The 70-980 exam expected you to be familiar with this concept and how it was implemented in the R2 release. In a converged network, multiple types of network traffic, such as management traffic, live migration traffic, and virtual machine traffic, all share the same physical network adapters on the Hyper-V host.

This was made possible by a combination of technologies in Windows Server 2012 R2. The first was NIC Teaming, which allowed you to group multiple physical network adapters into a single logical team for bandwidth aggregation and fault tolerance. You would then create a Hyper-V Virtual Switch on top of this team.

The next step was to create multiple virtual network adapters on the management operating system, one for each type of traffic (e.g., vNIC for management, vNIC for live migration). You could then use features like Quality of Service (QoS) to guarantee a certain amount of bandwidth for each traffic type. System Center 2012 R2 VMM provided powerful tools, such as port profiles and logical switches, to standardize and automate the deployment of these complex converged network configurations across all your Hyper-V hosts.

Deep Dive into Monitoring and Operations Updates for the 70-980 Exam

Welcome to the third part of our in-depth series on the Microsoft 70-980 exam. In the previous section, we explored the significant updates to the private cloud fabric, focusing on the new capabilities in Hyper-V, Storage Spaces, and Virtual Machine Manager R2. With a firm grasp of how to build a modern, capable fabric, we now turn our attention to the critical tasks of monitoring its health and ensuring its data is protected. A cloud is only as good as its operational stability and resilience.

This part will focus on the updates to the monitoring and data protection layers of the Microsoft private cloud stack. We will delve into the new features of System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager (SCOM), including its enhanced application and network monitoring. We will then examine the improvements in System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager (DPM), particularly its enhanced capabilities for protecting virtualized workloads and its new integration with the public cloud. These operational topics were a key knowledge area for the 70-980 exam.

What's New in System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager (SCOM)

System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is the primary tool for monitoring the health and performance of the entire private cloud. The 70-980 exam required you to be knowledgeable about the key improvements introduced in the SCOM 2012 R2 release. One of the major new additions was the integration of System Center Global Service Monitor. This was a cloud-based service that allowed you to monitor the availability of your external-facing websites from multiple geographic locations around the world, providing an "outside-in" perspective on your application's health.

The core network monitoring capabilities were also significantly enhanced in SCOM 2012 R2. The new release provided much more detailed monitoring of physical network devices like routers and switches, giving administrators deeper visibility into the health of the underlying network fabric that the private cloud depended on.

Another significant area of improvement was the integration with Microsoft Visual Studio for Application Performance Monitoring (APM). SCOM R2 could now pass detailed performance and exception data directly to Visual Studio, allowing development teams to debug issues found in production directly in their development environment. This tighter integration between IT operations and development was a key theme. A solid understanding of these new features was a core requirement for the 70-980 exam.

Implementing Fabric Health Monitoring

A key role of SCOM in a private cloud environment is to provide deep health monitoring of the fabric itself. The 70-980 exam expected you to understand how this was achieved through the tight integration between SCOM 2012 R2 and VMM 2012 R2. When you integrated these two products, SCOM could discover and monitor all the components of the private cloud fabric that were being managed by VMM. This provided a single, unified view of the health of your entire infrastructure.

This monitoring was enabled by a set of specialized Management Packs. A management pack is a sealed file that contains the monitoring knowledge for a specific application or technology. SCOM R2 used management packs for Windows Server, Hyper-V, VMM, and other technologies to understand what to monitor and how to interpret the data. For example, the Hyper-V management pack contained rules and monitors that would track the performance counters of a Hyper-V host and generate an alert if, for instance, the CPU utilization was too high or a virtual machine went down.

The integration provided rich, diagram-based health views directly within the VMM console. This allowed a fabric administrator to see the health state of their hosts, clusters, and storage directly in their primary management tool, without having to switch to the SCOM console for basic health information. This deep, fabric-aware monitoring was a key benefit of the R2 suite and a central topic for the 70-980 exam.

Leveraging Application Performance Monitoring (APM)

The Application Performance Monitoring (APM) feature in SCOM 2012 R2 was a powerful tool for monitoring the health of applications running on the private cloud. The 70-980 exam required you to understand its purpose and key capabilities. APM was designed to monitor .NET and Java web applications from a performance and reliability perspective. It went beyond simple infrastructure monitoring (like CPU and memory) to provide deep insights into the application's internal workings.

APM worked by instrumenting the application's code to collect detailed telemetry. It could track the time taken to execute specific lines of code, monitor the performance of calls to a database, and capture detailed exception information when something went wrong. This allowed operations teams to quickly identify whether a performance problem was caused by the infrastructure, the network, or a bug in the application code itself.

As mentioned earlier, a key new feature in the R2 release was the improved integration with Visual Studio. When APM detected an application exception, it could create a special type of alert in SCOM. An application developer could then open this alert directly from their Visual Studio environment. This would import all the rich diagnostic data, including a full IntelliTrace log, allowing the developer to debug the production issue as if it had happened on their own machine. This DevOps-enabling feature was an important part of the 70-980 exam curriculum.

What's New in Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2012 R2

System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) is the component of the private cloud stack responsible for backup and recovery. The 70-980 exam required you to be familiar with the important new capabilities introduced in the DPM 2012 R2 release. One of the most significant enhancements was the addition of support for backing up virtual machines that were running the Linux operating system. This was a major step in enabling DPM to protect heterogeneous data center environments.

The performance and scalability of virtual machine protection were also improved. DPM 2012 R2 leveraged the new features in Windows Server 2012 R2, such as the ability to back up from a differencing disk on the fly, which led to more efficient and less impactful VM backups. This allowed for a much greater density of virtual machines to be protected by a single DPM server.

Perhaps the most important new feature, and a key focus for the 70-980 exam, was the dramatically improved integration with the public cloud. DPM 2012 R2 introduced the ability to use Microsoft Azure Backup as a long-term retention target. This provided a seamless and cost-effective way to replace traditional off-site tape backups with a modern, cloud-based solution. This hybrid cloud backup scenario was a central theme of the R2 release.

Integrating DPM with the Private Cloud Fabric

The primary role of DPM in a private cloud environment is to provide robust, application-consistent protection for the virtualized workloads running on the Hyper-V fabric. The 70-980 exam required you to understand how DPM 2012 R2 was integrated to achieve this. The process began by deploying the DPM protection agent to all the Hyper-V hosts in your fabric. This agent allowed the DPM server to communicate with the hosts and to coordinate the backup process.

The core of the configuration was the creation of Protection Groups. A protection group is a collection of data sources that are backed up with the same policy settings, such as the backup frequency and the retention range. For a private cloud, you would create protection groups that contained the virtual machines you wanted to protect. DPM was intelligent enough to automatically discover all the VMs running on a Hyper-V cluster and to automatically include new VMs in the protection group as they were created.

DPM provided application-aware backups for the VMs. This meant that for applications like SQL Server or Exchange running inside a VM, DPM could coordinate with the application's VSS writer to ensure that the backup was in a transactionally consistent state. This allowed for the granular recovery of individual databases or mailboxes directly from the VM backup. This deep integration with the fabric was a key operational skill for the 70-980 exam.

Implementing Cloud-Based Backup with Azure Backup

The ability to integrate DPM 2012 R2 with Azure Backup was one of the most significant new hybrid cloud features in the R2 wave, and it was a critical topic for the 70-980 exam. This feature provided a powerful and modern solution for off-site, long-term data retention, which is a crucial component of any robust disaster recovery strategy. The integration allowed you to extend your on-premises DPM server with the virtually limitless and highly durable storage of the Azure public cloud.

The configuration process began by creating an Azure Backup vault in your Azure subscription. You would then download a vault credential file and register your on-premises DPM 2012 R2 server with the vault. This established a secure connection between your data center and Azure. After the registration, you could modify your DPM protection groups to add an "online protection" goal.

In the protection group settings, you would continue to specify your short-term protection goals to local disk for fast operational recovery. In addition, you would configure the online protection settings, specifying which data should be sent to Azure and the long-term retention policy for that data (e.g., keep yearly backups for 7 years). DPM would then automatically handle the process of encrypting the data and sending it to your Azure Backup vault. This "DPM to Azure" scenario was a cornerstone of the hybrid cloud story for the 70-980 exam.

Deep Dive into Service Delivery and Automation Updates for the 70-980 Exam

Welcome to the fourth part of our in-depth series on the Microsoft 70-980 exam. In the previous sections, we explored the critical updates to the private cloud fabric and the enhanced capabilities for monitoring and data protection in the R2 releases. With a solid, well-managed, and protected infrastructure in place, we now turn our attention to the top layer of the private cloud stack: service delivery and automation. This is the layer that transforms the underlying fabric into a true, self-service cloud experience.

This part will focus on the significant updates made to the automation and service management components of the System Center suite. We will delve into the new features of System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator, with a special focus on the powerful new Service Management Automation engine. We will then examine the improvements in System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager, particularly its role in building a service catalog and enabling cloud chargeback. These topics were central to the "self-service" and "automated" pillars of the private cloud and were key domains for the 70-980 exam.

What's New in System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator

System Center Orchestrator is the primary engine for automating tasks and processes within the Microsoft private cloud. The 70-980 exam required you to be knowledgeable about the key improvements introduced in the Orchestrator 2012 R2 release. While the core graphical runbook designer remained a central feature, the most significant new addition was a completely new automation capability called Service Management Automation (SMA). SMA was introduced alongside the traditional Orchestrator runbooks as a more modern, scalable, and powerful automation platform.

SMA was built from the ground up on Windows PowerShell Workflow. This meant that instead of creating automations by dragging and dropping activities in a graphical designer, you would write them as PowerShell scripts. This code-based approach was much more appealing to administrators and developers who were already proficient in PowerShell. It also provided features that were not available in the graphical runbooks, such as the ability to run multiple activities in parallel and to have runbooks that could be suspended and resumed.

The introduction of SMA represented a major architectural shift and a nod towards the growing importance of PowerShell in the data center. For the 70-980 exam, you needed to understand the architecture of SMA, how it differed from the traditional Orchestrator runbooks, and the primary use cases for this powerful new automation engine.

Building Automation Runbooks with Orchestrator

While SMA was the major new feature, the traditional graphical runbooks in System Center Orchestrator were still fully supported and widely used. The 70-980 exam, being a recertification, still expected you to be proficient in the core concepts of Orchestrator. A graphical runbook is a workflow that you build in the Runbook Designer by linking together various "activities" on a design canvas. Each activity performs a specific task, such as creating a virtual machine, running a PowerShell script, or querying a database.

The power of Orchestrator comes from its Integration Packs. An integration pack is an add-on that contains a set of activities for a specific system, such as Active Directory, VMware, or the other System Center components. By using these integration packs, you can build runbooks that automate complex processes that span across multiple different systems. For example, a runbook for provisioning a new user could have activities that interact with Service Manager, Active Directory, and Exchange.

A typical automation scenario would involve a runbook that is triggered by an event, such as a new request in Service Manager. The runbook would then execute a series of steps, passing data between activities on the "data bus," and performing the requested action. A solid understanding of how to construct, test, and troubleshoot these graphical runbooks was a foundational skill for any private cloud administrator and a required competency for the 70-980 exam.

Introduction to Service Management Automation (SMA)

Service Management Automation (SMA) was the most significant new feature in the Orchestrator 2012 R2 release, and it was a critical topic for the 70-980 exam. SMA introduced a new, highly scalable automation engine based on PowerShell Workflow. Unlike the traditional Orchestrator runbooks, which were graphical, SMA runbooks were written entirely in PowerShell. This provided much greater flexibility and power for those comfortable with scripting.

The SMA architecture was designed for scalability and was based on web services. It consisted of a web service endpoint and one or more runbook workers. This allowed for a highly available and load-balanced automation environment. The runbooks themselves were stored in the Orchestrator database and were managed through PowerShell or a separate web-based management portal. This was a departure from the dedicated Runbook Designer client used for traditional runbooks.

SMA runbooks could leverage the full power of PowerShell, including integration with any system that had a PowerShell module. They also inherited the benefits of PowerShell Workflow, such as the ability to checkpoint a long-running job and resume it if there was an interruption. For the 70-980 exam, you needed to be able to describe the architecture of SMA, contrast its capabilities with traditional Orchestrator runbooks, and understand the basic structure of an SMA runbook written in PowerShell Workflow.

What's New in System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager (SCSM)

System Center Service Manager (SCSM) is the component of the private cloud stack that provides the IT Service Management (ITSM) capabilities, including the self-service portal and the service catalog. The 70-980 exam required you to be familiar with the key improvements introduced in the SCSM 2012 R2 release. A major area of enhancement was the HTML5-based self-service portal, which provided a much more modern and customizable user experience than the previous Silverlight-based portal.

The performance and scalability of the Service Manager data warehouse were also improved, allowing for faster reporting and a greater volume of data. This was particularly important for the new cloud chargeback capabilities that were introduced in the R2 release.

Perhaps the most important new feature was the introduction of System Center Service Reporting. This was a new component that leveraged the SCSM data warehouse to provide detailed reporting on the consumption of private cloud resources. This reporting capability was the key enabler for implementing cloud chargeback and showback models. A solid understanding of these new features, especially the new portal and the service reporting functionality, was essential for the 70-980 exam.

Creating and Publishing Service Offerings

The ultimate goal of a private cloud is to deliver IT as a service. In the Microsoft stack, this was achieved by creating a service catalog in System Center Service Manager. The 70-980 exam required you to understand this process. The service catalog is a list of standardized services that the IT department offers to the business. The process of building this catalog begins by creating "Request Offerings." A request offering is the form that a user will fill out in the self-service portal to request a specific service, such as "Request a new standard virtual machine."

You would then bundle one or more related request offerings into a "Service Offering." A service offering is a higher-level grouping of services, such as "Virtual Machine Services." These service offerings are then published to the service catalog, making them visible to end-users in the self-service portal.

The final and most critical step is to link the request offering to an automation runbook in Orchestrator or SMA. When a user submits a request through the portal, SCSM will create a service request work item. This work item will then automatically trigger the associated runbook, which will perform the actual technical steps to fulfill the request. The ability to connect these components to create an end-to-end, automated service delivery pipeline was a central theme of the 70-980 exam.

Implementing Cloud Chargeback and Reporting

A key characteristic of a true cloud model is the ability to measure resource consumption and, if desired, charge the business units for the resources they use. The R2 release introduced a formal solution for this, and it was an important topic for the 70-980 exam. This was enabled by the new System Center Service Reporting component. Service Reporting used the Service Manager data warehouse to collect and aggregate resource usage data from across the private cloud.

The process involved using connectors to pull data from VMM about virtual machine usage (such as CPU, memory, and storage consumption) and from SCOM about the health and availability of the services. This data was loaded into the data warehouse and processed into a format suitable for reporting. Service Reporting came with a pre-built set of reports that could be used to analyze this data.

These reports provided the foundation for a chargeback or showback system. You could run reports that would show, for example, the total resource consumption for all the VMs belonging to the Finance department. This information could then be used to either "show back" the cost to that department for their awareness, or to actually "charge back" the cost through an internal billing process. Understanding the role of Service Reporting in enabling this key cloud capability was a required competency for the 70-980 exam.

A Strategic Guide to Passing the 70-980 Exam

We have now reached the fifth and final part of our comprehensive guide to the Microsoft 70-980 exam. Over the course of the previous four installments, we have methodically explored the new and enhanced features of the "R2" wave of Microsoft's private cloud stack. We covered the critical updates to the fabric in Hyper-V and VMM, the enhanced monitoring and data protection capabilities in SCOM and DPM, and the powerful new service delivery and automation features in Orchestrator and Service Manager. You are now equipped with the core technical knowledge required.

This concluding part will pivot from the "what" to the "how." We will focus on the strategy and methodology for translating your knowledge into a passing score, with a special emphasis on the unique nature of a recertification exam. Possessing the information is the first step, but a clear plan for how to consolidate your learning, validate your readiness, and approach the exam with a calm and tactical mindset is equally important. This is your final roadmap to confidently conquering the 70-980 exam.

Building Your Final 70-980 Exam Study Plan

In the final weeks leading up to your 70-980 exam, a focused and strategic study plan is absolutely essential. The key to this plan is to remember that this was a recertification exam. Its purpose was to test your knowledge of the new features in the R2 releases, not to re-test your existing knowledge of the 2012 versions. Therefore, your final study plan must be laser-focused on the delta between the two product waves. Your first action should be to take the official "Skills Measured" document and, for each objective, explicitly identify the R2-specific feature it relates to.

Next, map out your remaining study time on a calendar. Allocate specific sessions to these new R2 features. For instance, if you are not yet comfortable with Service Management Automation (SMA), schedule a dedicated session to review the TechNet articles on its architecture and then to write a simple PowerShell Workflow runbook in your lab. Your plan must be heavily weighted towards hands-on practice with these new capabilities, as this is the best way to solidify your understanding.

Your plan should also explicitly schedule time for taking any available practice exams and, just as importantly, for thoroughly reviewing the results. The last day or two before the exam should be reserved for a light review of your notes, particularly any comparison charts you have made between the 2012 and 2012 R2 features. A well-executed final study plan is the key to walking into the 70-980 exam feeling prepared for its specific focus.

Leveraging the "What's New in R2" Documentation

For a recertification exam like the 70-980 exam, the single most important set of study materials was the official "What's New" documentation on the archived Microsoft TechNet library. These articles were the definitive source of truth for the new features and were the primary source material from which the exam questions were developed. Your study efforts should have been centered around these documents.

There was a "What's New in R2" article for each of the major products: Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager, Operations Manager, Orchestrator, and so on. You should have treated these articles as your primary textbook. For each new feature mentioned, such as Generation 2 VMs or Storage Tiering, you should have read the corresponding section in detail and then followed the links to the more in-depth articles that explained the feature's architecture and configuration steps.

While third-party study guides and books could provide a helpful overview, they were secondary to this official documentation. By focusing your reading on these "What's New" articles, you ensured that you were studying exactly the material that was in scope for the 70-980 exam and not wasting time reviewing features from the original 2012 release that you were already expected to know.

The Absolute Necessity of a Hands-On R2 Lab

There is no substitute for hands-on experience when preparing for a technical exam like the 70-980 exam. This is especially true for a recertification exam, where you need to get practical experience with the new features. It was not enough to read about Storage Tiering; you had to have actually built a storage pool with SSDs and HDDs and configured a tiered space. It was not enough to read about Service Management Automation; you had to have actually written and tested a PowerShell Workflow runbook.

Your lab environment for the 70-980 exam had to be running the R2 versions of all the products. This included Windows Server 2012 R2 for your domain controller and Hyper-V hosts, and the full System Center 2012 R2 suite for your management servers. Building this lab, typically using a virtualization platform like Hyper-V, was an invaluable learning experience in itself.

Once your lab was built, you should have used it to systematically work through the new R2 features. Create a Generation 2 VM and see the difference in the settings. Configure the HNV Gateway in VMM R2. Integrate your DPM R2 server with an Azure Backup vault. The experience you gained from deploying, configuring, and troubleshooting these new features was the single most effective way to prepare for the practical, scenario-based questions on the 70-980 exam.

Mastering the Differences between 2012 and 2012 R2

A key challenge of the 70-980 exam was being able to clearly articulate the differences between the 2012 and 2012 R2 versions of the products. The exam questions were often designed to test this specific knowledge. For example, a question might present a business requirement and ask you to identify the best solution, where one of the answer choices was a feature only available in the R2 release.

A highly effective study technique was to create your own comparison chart or "delta document." For each major component of the private cloud stack (Hyper-V, VMM, SCOM, etc.), create a table with two columns. In the first column, list the key capabilities of the 2012 version. In the second column, list the new or enhanced capabilities that were added in the 2012 R2 version.

This exercise would force you to actively identify and consolidate the key differences. For example, for Hyper-V, your chart might list "VHDX support" in the 2012 column, and "Online VHDX Resize" and "Generation 2 VMs" in the 2012 R2 column. Reviewing this chart regularly would be an excellent way to prepare for questions that tested your knowledge of the specific advancements in the R2 wave, which was the entire point of the 70-980 exam.

Understanding the Hybrid Cloud Scenarios

The R2 wave of the private cloud products significantly enhanced the hybrid cloud capabilities of the platform, making it much easier to connect the on-premises data center to the Microsoft Azure public cloud. The 70-980 exam placed a strong emphasis on these new hybrid scenarios. You needed to have a solid, practical understanding of how these integrations worked.

Two of the most important hybrid scenarios were related to networking and storage. For networking, the key feature was the new HNV Gateway in Windows Server 2012 R2, which could be managed by VMM R2. You needed to understand how this gateway could be used to create a secure site-to-site IPsec VPN tunnel between your on-premises virtual network and a virtual network in Azure. This provided seamless, hybrid connectivity for your applications.

For storage, the key scenario was the integration of DPM 2012 R2 with Azure Backup. You needed to understand the process of registering your DPM server with an Azure Backup vault and configuring your protection groups to send long-term backups to the cloud. This DPM-to-Azure backup solution was a cornerstone of the hybrid data protection story. Mastering these two key hybrid scenarios was a critical requirement for the 70-980 exam.

Exam Day Strategies for Success

Your performance on the day of the 70-980 exam would have depended on your preparation and your mindset. As a recertification exam, it was often shorter and more intensely focused than a standard exam. Time management was still critical. A good strategy was to make a first pass through all the questions, answering the ones you were confident about immediately. The questions on a recertification exam can be very specific, so if you did not immediately recognize the R2 feature being asked about, it was wise to mark the question for review and move on.

For all questions, read the question stem and all the answer choices very carefully. Pay close attention to any mention of a specific product version. The question was designed to trick you if you were thinking in terms of the older 2012 version. The correct answer was almost always related to a new feature or an enhancement introduced in the R2 release. Use the process of elimination to rule out any options that described older technologies.

Trust in your focused preparation. You put in the work to learn the delta between the product versions. Be confident in your knowledge of the new R2 features. A calm, strategic approach, combined with your deep knowledge of what was new in the R2 platform, was the key to successfully passing the 70-980 exam.

Conclusion

Passing the 70-980 exam was a significant achievement that demonstrated your commitment to staying current with Microsoft's evolving data center technologies. While the System Center private cloud was a powerful on-premises solution, the industry trend has continued to move towards a more hybrid and public cloud-centric model. The knowledge you gained from the R2 platform was a direct stepping stone to the next generation of Microsoft's hybrid cloud solutions.

The direct successor to the private cloud concept was Azure Stack (now Azure Stack HCI and Azure Stack Hub). Azure Stack was designed to bring the actual Azure services and APIs into the on-premises data center, providing a truly consistent hybrid cloud experience. Your understanding of managing an on-premises cloud fabric with VMM and SCOM provided the perfect foundational knowledge for learning how to manage an Azure Stack environment.

Ultimately, the path has led to a world where on-premises resources are managed as an extension of the public cloud through services like Azure Arc. The core concepts you mastered for the 70-980 exam—virtualization, software-defined networking, storage virtualization, and automation—are all still fundamental in this modern hybrid world. Your journey with the 70-980 exam was a critical step in the evolution from a traditional data center administrator to a modern cloud and hybrid infrastructure engineer.

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