virtual pc for test lab

kongming0gn

hi guys,

first of all id like to say that this is a wonderful site for guys like me who are aspiring to get certified with MS.

i just want to ask if anybody of you can help me out, i wanna know more about (or even from step zero) on how to use virtual machines for a home lab. i mean how can i use it to create an imaginary network environment in my pc (i only got 1 pc) so i can test whatever i learn about xp.

and another thing, is there a big difference in terms of effectiveness as a review material between sybex 70-270 book 2nd and 3rd edition?

thanks a lot and more power to all of you and techexams.net!

rockstar81

RE Virtual PC, basically once you install it on your system you press a start button and a black window opens up thats represents your own physically pc booting up, if you insert floopy or cd rom in drive it will boot and start installing the OS within that single window. Do this a couple of times and you will have several windows open that represent a running pc. Once all are open you can either add static ip adds for a small workgroup or install 1 server and 1 or 2+ clients and set up AD,dhcp,dns etc and set a domain up. Its great stuff and an excellent way of getting hands on with min cost

kongming0gn

tnx a lot... wow, that seems cool and easy... and another thing, is the level of effectivenes of this scheme similar to setting up a physical network instead?

rockstar81

Yes I have found it to be very real, just like a real network without the wires and physcial base units etc. Id advise anyone to give it a go, it really is excellent.

!30

HeHe , sound's great for me , not having a real laboratory

The program name IS virtual PC ? or like that ?whre can I get it? But I dident't get the exaplanation , I can have on a single PC winows XP , 2 2003 servr's , 2 XP's etc.. ?diferent Ipnconfiguration like real comptuer's?

I think RAM usage is huge and procesor cycle's to : Can you exaplin us in detaly ?

sharptech

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

geekie

I've been using Virtual Server for my home lab and it's been a real life saver for MS certs! You can get a free copy here

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/software/default.mspx

Make sure you got lots of RAM! Here is a link to creating a Virtual Cluster

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/virtualserver/deploy/cvs2005.mspx

Way out of the scope for 70-270 but gives a good description of how to create a sysprepped virtual disk to ease deployment of VM's. In my home lab I got two Parent VM's, one Sever 2003 Ent Edition and one XP Pro. Takes me about 5-10 mins to create a new VM.

!30

Yeah , Virtual PC 2004 rock's,it'c cool to have Virtual PC instaled to manage an windows 2003 server , crate AD's,DNS servers sharing , printing ..etc. and some XP , windows instalation automation and a lot of thing's on a single PC.

-but the point is , to have a lot of RAM , because you are put to chose how much RAM is instaalled on each virtual PC,and if you have many V-PC 's , I think recomended amount of RAM for each vpc is like 128 MB , coz 64 MB suck's.

But the most interesting thing is , not only you consume less money ,tme , but every virtual PC can have many OS's no ?

kongming0gn

i have another question here... do need to add another nic of were to create 4 virtual machines? thanks guys for all the info, it helps a lot...

kongming0gn

sorry for the typo-error.. i mean, do i need to add another nic if i were to create 4 virtual machines? i have one nic on my pc.

!30

@kongming0gn , you could just use : edit :

No man , Virtual PC , has some option's regarding netowrk's like virtual NIC ( a virtual netowrk interface , with it's own Ip , etc , vor each virtual PC ) or internet sharing , if you want all virtual PC's get out on the net , on the same Ip , something like NAT .

-so no you don't need more than one nic for your job

kongming0gn

ok, that's good news... i havent tried anything about windows server 2003. does the active server, dhcp and dns service comes along with that software or do i need seperate installers for each? thanks again...