Recommendations in building my own lab

Sepiraph

Having recently passed the BCMSN and now studying for the BCSI, I am at the point where I am going to build my own lab as well. I did some research online and here is a setup that was recommended:

4x 2950 switches
2x 2620 routers (HSRP)
2x 3560
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1x 7911G IP Phone
1x Cisco WLAN adapter
1x Cisco AP

I am thinking that the 1st 3 items should be enough for CCNP since the later are for Voice and Wireless.

Also I am wondering how much did you guys budget? (aside from getting old equipments off work for free :P). I am thinking ~$500 to start, and any recommendation for good sites to buy from? (I'm not sure if I trust to buy from Ebay)

Lastly, are that any special consideration on how to house these equipments? I see that most people have one of those server racks, and I assume it'd be wise to buy a decent UPS as well.

dtlokee

All you really need for the BSCI will be routers, the switches are not required although can be helpful with the flexibility of your lab to reconfigure it without changin cables around. You will want atleast 4 routers and one frame-relay switch which can be a 2520 or 2521. You can use 2500's for most of the topics but you will want some routers that support the newer features (even though they are not really tested). I would go for the 2600XM routers for 12.4, but again you can get away with the 2600's running 12.3 (the 2620 can run this with 32MB of flash which may require a bootrom upgrade)

dynamik

That looks like the list off of here:
http://shouldhavegonewithcisco.com/2007/08/07/best-ccnp-lab-part-i/
http://shouldhavegonewithcisco.com/2007/10/24/best-ccnp-lab-part-ii/

I'm curious to see what others think of this setup. I want to get my CCNA done early next year and move on immediately on to the CCNP exams.

If you want to stay under $500, you're going to cry when you see what those 3560s go for.

Someone else recommended this brand of rack, so I picked one up. It's great quality and certainly meets my needs: http://www.dantraknet.com/index.php?cPath=22&osCsid=f50e1aee1a8a63f10bc12f9702e0d2fd

I only have a UPS because my apartment is horribly wired. If we have both computers, the TV, and the microwave or vacuum going, there's a good chance the breaker's going to trip. I do not want to lose power in the middle of working on something. If you just want to protect your equipment, a surge protector will be fine.

Congrats on the BCMSN pass BTW.

[edit]
You also might want to look into dynamips/dynagen if you have a tight budget.