What is your lab setup like? And some questions

Hello,
I have been reading forum posts on setting up labs for study. I have decided to go with two separate boxes to build two servers and maybe have virtual servers on them. I would like to know how others have their labs set up for mcsa study.

I do have a few questions please:
How much ram would I need for each machine?
what kind of processors would I need?
How can I set up my lab to keep the servers separate from the rest of my network? I mean, if I am going to be playing around with dns and dhcp, I wouldn't want that on the same network with my regular everyday machines, right?

Forgive me for being such a novice. I greatly appreciate any answers, and I will continue to read and educate myself.

thanks,
Lynne

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Comments

JeanM

My workstation PC is a basic I3 with 16gb of ram , ssd boot drive and 2nd non ssd drive for data, I run vmware workstation on it with vms.
My lab PC is a dual xeon esxi host with 24gb of ram, runs my server 2008/2012 servers , wsus and exchange , cisco uc apps.

Ram wise, as much as you can afford, and for storage SSD makes a BIG difference for i/o.
CPU, you can get away with a basic I3 if you keep it simple.

Asif Dasl

I'm using a laptop, an Asus G750JM with 32GB of RAM and RAID-0 500GB SSDs. I've another few machines for my VMware lab but I won't bore you with their specs...

What I wanted to ask was - what are you studying part from MCSA? Are you just doing Server 2012 because a laptop would do just fine or are you thinking about Hyper-V or ESXi because then the servers would be a good idea but you probably also want to get a switch if you do that.

There is tons of lab suggestions in the Virtualization sub forum from cheap to expensive.

kriscamaro68

I have 2 hp dl160 g6 servers with the l5520 low voltage cpu that is 16 cores and 72gb of ram per server. They have a single ssd in them running Server 2012R2. I also have a desktop running a quad core amd with 8gb of ram. It has 5ssd's and 1 hdd. It is running Server 2012R2 with storage pools/storage tiering. The desktop is my DC and the 2 dl160's are in a Hyper-V ilover cluster. I have a bunch of quad port nic's setup and use the storage pool from the desktop as the storage for the Hyper-v Cluster. I like overkill.

pjd007

kriscamaro68 wrote: »

I have 2 hp dl160 g6 servers with the l5520 low voltage cpu that is 8 cores total with 72gb of ram each. They have a single ssd in them running Server 2012R2. I also have a desktop running a quad core amd with 8gb of ram. It has 5ssd's and 1 hdd. It is running Server 2012R2 with storage pools/storage tiering. The desktop is my DC and the 2 dl160's are in a Hyper-V ilover cluster. I have a bunch of quad port nic's setup and use the storage pool from the desktop as the storage for the Hyper-v Cluster. I like overkill.

That's expensive though !

I have an i5 CPU with 16GB of RAM running on Win 8.1 with 2 SSD's and 1 HDD, I've setup 5 VM's and I'm currently studying for 410.

This along with using MS virtual labs is adequate IMO and if I need more hardware for subsequent exams I'll buy it as and when.

kriscamaro68

pjd007 wrote: »

That's expensive though !

I have an i5 CPU with 16GB of RAM running on Win 8.1 with 2 SSD's and 1 HDD, I've setup 5 VM's and I'm currently studying for 410.

This along with using MS virtual labs is adequate IMO and if I need more hardware for subsequent exams I'll buy it as and when.

1 dl160 with 2 8 core procs and 72gb of ram cost $569 on ebay. All you need a hdd/ssd and you will have enough for all the labbing you ever want. Plus these servers are on VMWares HCL so once done with MS you can jump right into VMWare if you want without worry of compatibility.

Asif Dasl

@Kris - do you know how much watts those DL160 servers you've got use? Just curious?

kriscamaro68

Asif Dasl wrote: »

@Kris - do you know how much watts those DL160 servers you've got use? Just curious?

They averaged 90 watts most of the time using a kill-a-watt.

That was with 4 ssd's running no hdd.

Asif Dasl

Thanks man.. lower than I thought.

RedGaiter

Is it necessary to have separate hardware to build a lab infrastructure? I do not think I can afford to set up a physical lab.

Right now, I'm just dual booting Server 2012 on my home pc and running virtual machines off of it. Is that sufficient?

kriscamaro68

RedGaiter wrote: »

Is it necessary to have separate hardware to build a lab infrastructure? I do not think I can afford to set up a physical lab.

Right now, I'm just dual booting Server 2012 on my home pc and running virtual machines off of it. Is that sufficient?

Not necessarily. For some of the advanced topics like failover clusters it would be better to have the extra hardware to have it all work correctly but its not needed in my opinion. You will want to make sure you desktop has enough ram and storage/speed to run enough vm's is all.