MCTS 70-640 listed as preferred for promotion — how do I handle a retired cert requirement?
My employer is listing MCTS 70-640 as preferred for an internal promotion to senior sysadmin and I'm trying to figure out the right path forward. The problem is the 70-640 exam was retired years ago and you literally can't sit for it anymore — it's not a question of whether I could pass it, it's that the credential can't be earned new.
I have about 8 years of Windows Server experience covering Active Directory, Group Policy, DNS, and DHCP — all the core 70-640 domains — but it was all on-the-job rather than certified. My day-to-day work involves the exact skills the cert tested, I just never had a reason to formalize it at the time the exam was still available.
I'm trying to figure out which current Microsoft certification makes the strongest equivalency argument. AZ-800 seems like the obvious candidate since it covers AD DS in hybrid environments, but I don't know how HR will receive that compared to what's written in the job posting. Should I approach my manager directly with a comparison of objectives or just sit for a current cert and present it as a done deal?
AZ-800 is your best argument for equivalency — it covers AD DS in Windows Server environments including hybrid scenarios, which is a superset of what 70-640 tested. If your company runs any Azure AD integration at all, it's genuinely more relevant than 70-640 ever was.
Go to your manager with the Microsoft official retirement notice and a side-by-side comparison of AZ-800 objectives against 70-640 objectives. HR teams that list retired certs usually haven't updated the posting in years — showing the equivalency directly is faster than waiting for them to figure it out themselves.
Most managers will accept a current cert over an impossible-to-obtain retired one once you frame it that clearly.
If the role is more Intune and endpoint management, MD-102 makes more sense. If it's pure server and AD, go AZ-800. Study time from your experience level is probably 6-8 weeks at 90 minutes a day — the hybrid identity sections are the new material, the on-prem AD content you already know cold.
Same situation happened at my company with an MCSE 2012 listing. I passed AZ-104 and presented the skills overlap document and that was enough for the promotion committee. Retired cert requirements are almost always a policy artifact from an old job description, not an active requirement anyone is enforcing.
I've been in a similar spot and honestly the best thing you can do is just get the closest modern equivalent and make the case internally. The 70-640 covered Active Directory, DNS, Group Policy, that whole stack, and those skills didn't disappear just because Microsoft retired the exam. If you're brushing up on the Group Policy and security settings side of things, practicing with something like mcts 70 640 group policy administration security settings 3 is still genuinely useful for understanding the material, not just for a cert line on a resume.
My advice: study the "why" behind every wrong answer, not just which answer is right. When I was prepping I'd get a question wrong and just memorize the correct one, and that didn't stick. Once I started actually understanding why the other options were wrong, like why a particular GPO inheritance order would break something or why a specific replication topology wasn't the right fit, it clicked. Bring that depth to your interview or your conversation with your manager and they'll see you actually know AD, which is the whole point of the requirement anyway.
I actually sat for 70-640 back before it retired and failed my first attempt pretty badly. What I changed was focusing almost entirely on Group Policy and Active Directory security settings instead of trying to cover everything equally -- the mcts 70 640 group policy administration security settings 3 practice tests were honestly what turned it around for me because they drill exactly the kind of scenario questions that tripped me up the first time.
For your situation I'd just document that the cert is retired and show your employer the equivalent Microsoft path. Most hiring managers and HR departments didn't write that job posting themselves and they'll accept a current credential once you explain it. Don't stress about a cert you literally can't take anymore -- focus on showing the knowledge instead.