MCSE private cloud home lab set up help needed

dtdellboy

Hi All,
I am new to Microsoft certs and some what to the windows server technology as well. I will be working in a new cloud project that is heavy on Hyper-V and want to explore getting the cert while i am on it.
Now i have setup home labs for Redhat related certs in the past on a single server with vmware player / KVM hosting the Redhat VMs. I want to take a similar approach with MCSE and see if i can setup few VMs running necessary windows servers on VMs but now on Hyper v. So have windows server 2012 as host os on a bare metal and have hyper-v on top of that. Then as many windows server vms as necessary. One caveat is i do not have any NAS , perhaps i can use freeNAS ?

I am not sure if i can do nested virtualization to have hyper -v on windows 20102 vms.

I am wondering if anyone has already come up with a such a design for above scenario.

Thanks in advance.

Derrick

YetAnotherITGuy

For 70-410, 70-411, you can get away installing Hyper-V on Windows 8 and learn most things. For 70-411 direct access, you need to hit the technet labs or if you have it setup at work, have a look at the setup. Windows 8 Hyper-V is only missing the datacenter features; so, you won't miss much when you learn.

70-412 - windows server 2012 can do shared-nothing clusters. Lookup the lab-design guides on Technet for various scenarios.
How to configure two node Windows Server 2012 cluster on Virtual Machines for testing? - Babulal Ghule's Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

CBT Nuggets 70-412 series by Greg Shields has an excellent lab build guide using Vyatta router.

For the Azure stuff, you need to hit technet labs or buy an Azure subscription which is 'free' for 30 days. You need a credit card.

PS - Hyper-V does not like nested-virtualization though VMWare doesn't seem to have a problem with it(though VMWare does not officially support it).