I have taken and passed 9 Microsoft and CompTIA certification exams. My usual method is to read 2-3 books, followed by an Exam Cram and a Transcender practice test. It seems to me that the author does not do an adequate job of explaining some of the objectives and for others, goes into extraneous detail that's downright confusing. Since I have not taken the exam yet, I can't verify my impression. Unfortunately, there are only 2 books available that include the 2005 updated objectives for CompTIA Server+ and this is one of them. I have been happy with the previous Exam Cram titles I have purchased.

I'd like to start off the review by saying that this is the only book out there that maps to the current exam objectives and is also worth buying. Anyone studying for this test has almost no choice. You have to buy this book.

With that said, this is in exam cram format. The topics are abridged and assume you know the basics about the technologies. You won't find many "ground-up" examples. In other words, this book isn't going to really teach you the subject matter if you don't know it. You will definitely need to rely on alternate resources (google / wikipedia).

Also, the book does not properly map to the objectives. There are a few sections that simply are not material covered by the test.. but they are in detail in the book. For one, the ESCON and telecom management models are completely off topic information.. and the section is very confusing. It is far too specific when the objectives map to a much more general knowledge. The same thing applied to the hot plug and hot swap sections. The book went into detail about the specific OS and hardware functions performed when you use a hot plug system. The objective just tell you to know the benefits and applications of hot plug. It doesn't tell you to know the low level operations of it.

Overall though, this book may give you information you don't need, but it doesn't really doesn't miss a lot of material that you DO need. There are only a couple of things that were listed on the objective that weren't really covered. Namely ORLM and OCE, off the top of my head. There may have been a blurb about that, but it wasn't really mentioned in a way that garnishes attention.

While the test questions were not similar to the actual test, it will give you a good idea on what you need to read up more on.

Bottom line: the test will give you good information to study from, but it won't teach you things you don't have basic knowledge of and it won't guarentee that you pass


ABOUT THE TEST:

Before taking the test, I highly suggest everyone download the objectives and look at them. The first thing you will notice is that the biggest content percentages are server system architecture (domain 1) and troubleshooting (domain 4). These take up about half the test.

This test is a lot harder to pass than people give it credit for. I passed by a comfortable margin, but the questions made it difficult (and not because they required knowledge I didn't have). A lot of the questions come down to opinion. It will ask you a question about what the best action is under a specific situation. The choices list the actions, but they never mention the purpose of the action. This can lead to two potential right answers. If the person who wrote the question did not take into account that there is more than one way to do things, then the answers end up being ambiguous.

Too many questions were like this. I pretty much aced all the factual question and answers, but some of these "best practices" questions left me with two perfectly viable answers. I may not of passed if I didn't do so well on all the factual questions.

For this reason, know domain 1 extremely well. Know everything about them. Any other factual information about the other sections, know them like the back of your hand. When 15%-20% of the questions come down to two viable answers, you are statistically bound to get half wrong. IMO, the rest of the "valid" best practices question rely heavily on experience. You won't know these by reading a book.

There were one or two questions which were poorly worded or just "wrong" (they were using incorrect facts). Additionally I may mention that the Novell operating system is still listed in the objectives, and not many people have experience with it. If you get any of those questions, and you didn't read up on the basics of netware, expect to get them wrong.

When all is said and done, you may have gotten 10%-15% of the questions wrong due to no fault of your own. The reliance on personal experience makes it even more difficult, so more people seem to fail this test than pass it (unlike the A+ or net+ tests).

In conclusion, soak up all the factual information possible. The "opinion" or "experience" questions are going to make you lose points. Then there are the poorly worded questions and the obscure topics, and some obscure facts. You will lose most of your points on these combined areas. If you know the pure hard facts (about 1.0 topics like buses, RAID, SCSI, fibre channel, etc) you stand a much better chance of passing. If you don't do this, and you do poorly on the factual questions, you will fail. Even if you do well on the factual questions, you still may fail if you do poorly on the opinions and experience related questions.

Good luck

This book did NOT APPLY AT ALL to the actual test that I just took a few hours ago. I was lucky to get a 660 (out of the 615) required to pass but I had to use educated guesses on a bunch of them.

Please use this and maybe some other source but at 700 pages long, i would have expected more. The 2 sample tests in the book and the one included on the CD are not even close to being compatible. This should be used just as a cram book-even the quick cram sheet inside the book to look at pre-test didn't really give me much information.

I'm severely disappointed and I've been in the workplace for 5+ years and worked extensively with servers for at leat 3 of those.

A good book for introduction to Server + concepts, but is poorly edited for the test objectives. The book offers too little information on troubleshooting fault tolerance. The 2007 exam I took was far from the material covered in the 700+page book. The 300+ questions in this book were way to easy and simple than the ones you will face. Many of the questions on the real exam have more than 2 answers. Some questions had 5 answers! The questions resembled Microsoft style paragraph type questions. I got a heavy dose of RAID 1,0+1,1+0, and RAID 5. Multiple drive sizes and space requirement arithmetic questions! Many questions on "if you add this adapter..blah.blah..why can the PC boot after POST? Know NIC adapter teaming,upgrading adapters and definitely learn UPS! This book was very insufficient for detail and preparing you the real exam. The worst thing was the questions that came with the book--they are too easy. I study the material/book for about 1 month and a half. I also concentrated on SCSI, which I didn't get much of on the exam. I have some server experience.

I failed with a 580, needing 615.

I am already certified A+, Network+, Security+, and i-Net+. (Sybex is the best, but they don't make a Server+ book) I guess I will study older books and use Wikiopedia.

The test isn't hard, I just didn't use enough resources. I won't buy anything Exam Cram again.

This is yet another experience with Exam Cram. I failed using the EXAM CRAM series....I failed MCP 70-271 twice using Exam cram books. With Sybex, I pass the first time and always with a high score!

This book deserves 1 star to match the 2007 test.

The Exam Cram and Exam Cram 2 series are excellent sources for the information you need to pass your exams. THIS book has all of the relevant information that you will need to pass the exam. However, it's the worst laid out book I have ever seen. While it tried to conform to the usual format of the Exam Cram series. It fails in one very important aspect. The editing is nearly non-existent. The book covers a topic in one paragraph and then turns around and goes over the exact same subject again 2 paragraphs later. It looks to me as though when it was updated from the older version of the exam things were added and nothing was removed. Any editor looking at this book would have a kitten. As I have explained it to some of my friends, "they have problem repeating their repetition problem."

This book is very in-depth and provides you with the information needed to pass the Server+ Exam. I've never had any issues with any of the Exam Cram products.

I am sure that most of the Exam Cram books are good. That being said, this book is so full of errors that it is almost unreadable. The claim that SQL servers have 30 disk drives in them, that SAN devices have dual 2.8 GHz procs with 4GB of RAM, or that GBICs have SC connectors is disappointing. But when it references the most common copper connection is the DB9, or in the study questions that DNS servers do not do name/IP resolution, we have now reached a point that using this book will actually hinder your progress.

I have quite a few fairly advanced network certs and have used this series before and the Exam Cram 2 series are fine books, just look to another source for this particular test.

This book is a great study resource for the new Server+ Exam. I recommend it to anyone looking to take the test who needs a great study resource!!

My exam tested memory types/specs as well as SCSI and SAN technologies very heavily, which this book does an excellent job of covering. There were many other questions this guide covered very little or not at all. For example, the exam tests on fire suppression technologies, something that is not even mentioned in this guide. I got a 732 out of 900. This is pretty much the only unofficial SK0-002 study guide out there for Server+ right now, so the only way you could get a more complete guide is to buy the official self-study materials from CompTIA. This guide is probably your best bet for value.

My exam tested memory types/specs as well as SCSI and SAN technologies very heavily, which this book does an excellent job of covering. There were many other questions this guide covered very little or not at all. For example, the exam tests on fire suppression technologies, something that is not even mentioned in this guide. I got a 732 out of 900. This is pretty much the only unofficial SK0-002 study guide out there for Server+ right now, so the only way you could get a more complete guide is to buy the official self-study materials from CompTIA. This guide is probably your best bet for value.

Exam Crams are always useful and go into sufficient depth provided that you have a good grounding in the technology behind the Exam Topics. At this time apart from courses and "googleing" the net this is the only collected study guide I know of for the Server+ 2005 Exam....more to follow no doubt?

If you have a couple of years under your belt with servers I'd say that this guide will get you through. If not you really need a bit more backround reading. Hewlett Packard do a number of online and downloadable courses. Their technologies relate quite a bit to the Server+ exam objectives and they also have a book HP Proliant Servers AIS study guide ISBN 0131467174 and available from this site. This may help to fill in the gaps.

I would also presume that you had taken and passed CompTIA's A+ exam and either CompTIA's Network+ or Prosofts TIA Convergence Technology Professional or at least the first exam in Cisco's CCNA qualification (Exam #640-821). Again all the study books and sources are availble from this web site. PC architecture and network related matters are really a must for Server+.

I have also found that as a supplement to Server+ and complimentary are the SNIA SCP (#S10-100) and SCSE (#S10-200) Storeage Area Network exams and qualifications. Their site www.snia.org has a mass of information on matters that the Server+ exam is heavy on i.e SCSI and backups and their are several recommended books available again on this site.

On the whole if you are familiar with the Exam Cram 2 format then go ahead and cram, book the exam and pass, at the time of writing there are a number of Exam price "deals" to encourage you to take the exam and if you use the HP study stuff as well you should also be prepared for two cheap HP Exams for HP ASP and HP AIS Certifications as well not forgetting SNIA. The makings and start of a good career I think! Best of luck!
*******Please Note This Edit***********on 23rd February 2006
The above reviewer like many others on technical books DID NOT read this cram properly. Fire surpression (Halon etc) is covered in this book page 476 and in index. I have the Official Course Books too and they cover that subject as much as this cram, little difference. One can understand the dissapointment of getting a low score in exams however a bad workman blames his tools and prehaps a little more attention to detail would have produced a better score and a more accurate review. A lesson for us all!