3/24/2004 -- On March 9 the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) posted the objectives for the upcoming revision of its Server+ certification exam.

Server+ is a one-exam title that certifies candidates' skills on a variety of vendor-neutral server technologies. CompTIA announced in February that it would be updating the exam this year.

The new objectives can be downloaded in PDF format here. The revised objectives contain a new category -- General Server Hardware Knowledge -- that encompasses 30 percent of the material covered. It includes 15 sub-objective items covering knowledge of various system architectures, server types and technologies like ATA, SCSI and clustering. The exam will continue to be 90 minutes long.

Michael Johnson, CompTIA's Server+ program manager, said the following regarding the objective changes: "For the most part the exam topic areas are unchanged but the details within the objectives have been updated for new technologies and also are grouped differently based on feedback from a SME Survey and focus group meeting held during the development of the objectives," he explained. "General Server Hardware Knowledge is an example of the reorganization."

When asked for details on what specific technologies have been added, Johnson said that information would most likely be released when the beta is introduced, sometime in Q2. According to Johnson, a separate beta exam will be released to test the new questions, instead of seeding unscored questions onto the current version of the exam, as was done with the recent A+ beta.

The final version of the exam is expected to go live in "Q4."

In other CompTIA news, the organization will be holding a subject matter expert (SME) meeting next month to evaluate its Network+ exam.

Depending on what is found during this evaluation, the exam may be upgraded, a spokesperson told CertCities.com. "We really won't know until the results are validated," she said.

The evaluation is expected to be completed by Q3 of this year.

The current Network+ exam was released in January 2002.

Those interested in becoming a Network+ SME can get more information here. -Becky Nagel

(Editors Note: Story updated on 3/31/04 to include more information about beta and other details.)