VMWare MCSE 2003 lab

Turgon

I have a couple of Proliant DL320's and a laptop running XP Home edition. I would like a Windows 2003 lab at home later in the year. I understand you can download a Windows 2003 server evaluation off the MS site?

Has anyone any good links for setting up a VMWare 2003 lab for MSCE studies or would I be better off just installing 2003 server on both machines?

Cheers

dynamik

Here's the link for the eval software: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/bb430831.aspx

You should consider getting a Technet download subscription. It's $349/year, and you can download any MS product for evaluation use, but they don't come with any time constraints or limitations. It's what I use, and I highly recommend it.

I'd go the VM route because you can have much more elaborate configurations, but if you just need a couple servers to play around with, just install it directly on each machine. It's totally your call.

VMWare setup is a breeze. You can either map the VM's CD-ROM to the host machine or an ISO, and install the OS from there. The only other thing you really need to configure is the memory and the network. You can either bridge or NAT to your existing network or put the machines on their own virtual network. The memory is likely to be your biggest limitation. You can setup a pretty nice network with 1gb dedicated to VMWare. I was running 4 2003 Server VMs last night with 2 XP clients on just a gig. I gave the servers 192mb and the clients 128mb. You can probably drop down to 128 and 64mb if you're tight though. You really don't need a lot for basic lab stuff (though the latter configuration does run noticeably slower). All in all, it's really straight forward. I setup everything without any reference (internet, help, book, etc.).

Feel free to PM me or post here if you have any other questions.