(Help) Buying Cheap Equipment For Lab.

jeromeblade

Hi Masters, Help me to setup a Lab and what are the thing should i buy and how many dusty pc lol, im a real beginner give me the list of software too and drivers list. Thanks in advance.

Alceo

You only need a single machine with plenty o RAM.
I' m using a custom PC i5/16GB/3 HD.
If you prefer you can buy an old server from ebay, from example a Dell Poweredge 2950, they are pretty cheap. Just make sure to have at least 16 Gb of RAM.
I would reccomend on the physical server to install VMware vSpehere (its' free).
Inside it you can then install several Windows 2012 with the Hyper-V role enabled and then install virtual machines on them so you can do things like Live Migratione, Failover cluster of VM and other cool things, all with one single Physical server. It's pretty cool

Xenomeow

Alceo wrote: »

You only need a single machine with plenty o RAM.
I' m using a custom PC i5/16GB/3 HD.
If you prefer you can buy an old server from ebay, from example a Dell Poweredge 2950, they are pretty cheap. Just make sure to have at least 16 Gb of RAM.
I would reccomend on the physical server to install VMware vSpehere (its' free).
Inside it you can then install several Windows 2012 with the Hyper-V role enabled and then install virtual machines on them so you can do things like Live Migratione, Failover cluster of VM and other cool things, all with one single Physical server. It's pretty cool

While i do agree that Vmware is a much better hypervisor, installing it then having a VM running hyper-v and creating nested VM's can have its own set of problems. Seeing by there own post they are a "real beginner" it would be much easier to do a bare metal 2012r2 install with hyper-v. Nested VM's are a bit advanced.

ecuadra

I suggest getting a PC and actually installing server 2012 in it. From there you can buy a cheap cisco switch and connect a couple laptops to it and a cheap pc or two.

This is for MCSA only, I think for MCSE you need three servers running at a time.

I tried using hyper v on my server with 2012 installed (no vmware) and virtualizing the PC's but I hated it.

jediweapon

I purchased a dell poweredge 2950 a couple years ago with 16GB of RAM. I am running hyperV and have a few 2012 VM's running without any issues.

nster

ecuadra wrote: »

I think for MCSE you need three servers running at a time

Yea I heard something similar. Would all 3 servers have to be good? For now I only have 2

iBrokeIT

Unix Surplus has some decent stuff in the "$99 servers" section for home lab beginners.

$99 Servers

jahaziel

Why would you ever need 3 servers for mcse when you can do the same with one 48gb memory server with vmware.

rmilyard

I am working on setting something like this up on Dell 2950 I have. It's 2 quad core 2ghz with 32gb ram.

Starting setting up this weekend but not 100% sure yet how doing it. Also got cheap router to segment from my home network.

jeromeblade

so i dont need some hardware to buy just i need to install vmware or hyper-v? how can i do that? 3 virtual pc in my laptop? wait if if use virtual box then i can make 5 virtual pc in my laptop then talk to each other ill install 4 windows 8 then 1 for server 2012 for 1 virtual is that right? correct me if im wrong i really wanted to pursue system admin and get my certification this year sorry newbie please help me answer me T_T please

netsysllc

You will want to run Hyper-V as you will be tested on it and need to know it for the 2012 exams. Even if it is Windows 8.1 hyper-v that is fine as you will be able to do most functions. RAM and DISK will be your most important parts, and SSD will help a lot.

Ugly-051

I use my work laptop with Hyper-V as the hypervisor. Laptop is a Core i5 2.6Ghz with 8GB DDR3 RAM and enough HDD space for the VMs obviously and it runs a good lab.

I have used trial editions of the O/S and can licence them from Technet Subscriptions.