291 Test Envoironment Question

qs1pos

I'm just starting to get into the objectives that require a test lab and I need some advice on what to do.Currently I am using MS Virtual PC and until now it has been very helpful in passing 270 and 290 however I'm not sure that its going to work for 291. I have been trying to read past posts about lab setups but they all seem to involve VMware which I understand is different then VPC.

Has Anyone out there used MS Virtual PC to set up a study lab for 291? If so, what setup did you use? or, Am I just spinning my wheels with MS VPC and do I need to get VMware? I'm setting this up in my home office with a DSL internet connection. I have a pretty beefy XP system with 2 gigs of ram Ect.

Your responses are greatly appreciated.

royal

I used Virtual Server and Virtual PC for every exam during my MCSE studies. It was only till after my MCSE I started using VMware Workstation 6 (which I like better).

nel

i use the free vmware server: http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

sign up and get your free serial's. its a good piece of kit and for free you cant knock it. i also used it for 291 with ease

sprkymrk

Am I just spinning my wheels with MS VPC and do I need to get VMware?

The latest version of VPC is very good. If you have experience with it, stick with it as it will do just fine.

BTW - What do you think the Microsoft Official Curriculum courseware uses to do labs?
Of course they use VPC. I recently took an SMS course and was quite impressed with the newest version of VPC, which I think is 2007 w/o googling for it.

qs1pos

BTW - What do you think the Microsoft Official Curriculum courseware uses to do labs?

Thanks for the responses, I didn't think about MS using their own product . Im freaking out a little trying to understand how to set this up so it works on a home network with a non-static ip. I'm kind of new to DNS Implementation as I'm sure you can tell. Do I need 2 NIC's in my VPC box? I read some posts about using NAT on one of the cards and that just served to confuse me more.

royal

qs1pos wrote:

BTW - What do you think the Microsoft Official Curriculum courseware uses to do labs?

Thanks for the responses, I didn't think about MS using their own product . Im freaking out a little trying to understand how to set this up so it works on a home network with a non-static ip. I'm kind of new to DNS Implementation as I'm sure you can tell. Do I need 2 NIC's in my VPC box? I read some posts about using NAT on one of the cards and that just served to confuse me more.

That's the nice thing about Vmware, you can just use NAT and you're all set. With Virtual PC/Server, it's not as easy. Basically, the way you do it is as follows:

1. Install a Microsoft loopback adapter on the host machine.

2. On your host machine, enable Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) to share from your main adapter that receives internet access to your loopback adapter. ICS is hard coded to use the 192.168.0.x /24 network. ICS also will work as DHCP and give your loopback adapter an ip address (192.168.0.1). I always configured the loopback adapter to have a static ip address of 192.168.0.1/24. Your virtual machine's should then have a default gateway of 192.168.0.1/24.

3. Set your virtual machine's in Virtual PC/Server to use the loopback adapter as their network adapter.

4. Your virtual servers will by default use dhcp and will also retrieve a dhcp address from the loopback adapter. If you statically configure your virtual servers, you'll want to use the loopback's address (192.168.0.1) as your default gateway to get out to the internet.

With this loopback method, your loopback adapter works as a router. Even if you are on a different network for your host machine, lets say 192.168.1.x /24, you can now RDP into your virtual servers from your host machine. I've used this method many times for configuring my virtual servers so they are on a different network than my host machine's environment, but still grant them access to the internet, and allow me to RDP into them from my host machine.

You could also scratch all this and just assign VPC an External Adapter. The problem with this though, is that your VMs will be on your network and if you're doing any labs such as DHCP, you will end up handing out IPs to your company which will piss them off.

qs1pos

You could also scratch all this and just assign VPC an External Adapter. The problem with this though, is that your VMs will be on your network and if you're doing any labs such as DHCP, you will end up handing out IPs to your company which will piss them off.

I will try the loopback setup, that seems to make sense to me. I just had a couple more questions regarding your last comment.

If I install an additional NIC would I still use ICS and just use the NIC in place of the Loopback Adaptor? I'm on a home network and no companys to worry about so I'm guessing the DHCP labs will not be a problem.

Also, I noticed that VPC has an option for NAT on the virtual adaptors. Is that different from VMware NAT?

Thanks again for the help.

royal

If you're going to be doing this at home, just use the External Adapter and forget about Loopback. A bunch of people at my company run VPC and I've helped them set up the loopback so there's no traffic on the corporate network and so their VMs can still get internet. That's the ONLY reason I ever used the loopback method.