Advice for newbie going for MCITP:EA

darkerosxx

I will be starting on studying for MCITP:EA exams next week. I'm very new to most of the microsoft concepts as I've focused on RHEL.

The materials I have so far are all the MCITP:EA Microsoft Press books and evaluation copies of Server '08/'03 to be used in labs. I invested in a home server I'll be using VMWare Server on that can run about 8-10 OS's simultaneously as the MS Press books said to have a virtual environment with several servers and several vista clients.

I'm looking at getting the CBTNuggets videos on MCSE. Has anyone viewed those or know if that information will definitely help for the MCITP:EA exams?

Anyone have any extra advice on materials, areas to focus on as a newbie, or any study/testing stories you'd like to share?

royal

MCSE is on Server 2003. The material will be similar in some fashion but very different in some aspects. I would wait for the Server 2008 Nuggets.

Also, if you can afford it, I would avoid VMware server, pay $220 for Technet subscription which will give you access to all the Microsoft software including Server 2008 with Hyper-V which will provide you better performance with VMs plus you'll get some of the hands on experience setting it up. Not to mention you'll be able to manage it with System Center Virtual Machine Manager that comes with the Technet subscription.

darkerosxx

Well I'm actually already running Windows Home Server on my home server and have no plans to remove it as it's supporting backups for several family members. It seems to me that VMWare Server is the best choice because of that situation, but what do you think?

royal

Well in that case, it should be fine. I'm a big fan of VMware workstation simply due to the fact you can create clones very easily. For example, I create a master image, do any updates, sysprep it, shut it down, and when I want a new server, I create a clone. Boot up the clone, let it go through an uattended installation. You now have a new instance of an OS up and running in a few minutes.

With Server 2008 it's a bit annoying since there's a lot more to it. A lot more that I just shut down a master copy, bring up a new server, and just use Sysinternals NEWSID on it.

VMware server it won't be as easy since there's no cloning. You can always create a master copy and just copy the VMDK (VMware Hard drive files) files to another location and when you create a new VM, just put the files in a new folder and tell the new VM to use the new VMDK files.

Thing is, VMware Server is free while VMware workstation is not.