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.