Setting up a practice network for 290

Squirrel23

Hi guys,

I'm working through the MS Self paced training book for 290 and I need to set up several computers. I have one set up with server 2003. I've looked ahead in the book and i need another one with server 2003 and one with XP to join to the domain. I'm guessing i can do a dual install for the second server and XP, as they are not needed at the same time in any of the exercises.

In this case. Can I just buy a crossover cable to join them up or will I need a router to do it properly??

Cheers.

rwwest7

You just need a switch. Or a generic cable/dsl router with a built in 4 port switch.

HandyMan

Why not download Virtual PC from Microsoft and set up virtual images on one PC?
It makes life so much easier. On my XP computer, I am hosting four 2003 servers and two XP clients, all contained in their own private network.

rwwest7

HandyMan wrote: »

Why not download Virtual PC from Microsoft and set up virtual images on one PC?
It makes life so much easier. On my XP computer, I am hosting four 2003 servers and two XP clients, all contained in their own private network.

That of course also depends on what your current computer is. You need a pretty beefy cpu to run 6 vitual machines.

dales

If you are limited by machine real estate I would be tempted to load 2k3 on the spare computer and have it run all the heavy duty things (dc,dns dhcp etc). then If you have a main computer, as the others have stated use either virtual pc or vmware server to load another 2k3 server and an xp client.

You need not give them too much leggage as you can get usable performance from allocating 384MB to the 2k3 box and 128MB to the XP.

the xp box will really only be used to confirm things like group policies and security settings are working ok so you dont need to install any additional software other than the base OS.

HandyMan

rwwest7 wrote: »

That of course also depends on what your current computer is. You need a pretty beefy cpu to run 6 vitual machines.

Actually not as beefy as many people think.
If you have a reasonable cpu, like a Pentium D or better, then it's really RAM you need more than anything. You can actually set up each Win 2003 server with 128 mb of ram and it runs fine (Exchange needs 192 mb). It's not like you're overloaded with users anyway.
With a 4 gb system running XP as the host, you still have nearly 3 gb of spare ram to play with.

I choose VirtualPC over the others because it's so simple to set up and run and it does the job perfectly well for MCSE training.

dynamik

Yea, I run my Server VMs at 256MB, and that's being generous. Most relatively new machines with a couple gigs of RAM could easily handle MCSA/E labbing (with the exception of additional services, such as Exchange or SQL Server).

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Virtual Box. I use VMware Workstation myself, but Virtual Box is my favorite of the free offerings.

undomiel

Only because I was late to the thread.

I second virtualbox and giving the VMs 256 MB of ram. You can load a decent amount VMs if you're skimpy with the ram.

Squirrel23

Cheers guys. I've downloaded Virtual PC 2007 and I'm running 2 2k3 servers with 256mb. I'm totally new to server tho, so having a few teething problems! Can I network the XP pc running virtual PC the two virtual 2k3 PCs??
Also I've made one of the 2k3 servers a DC and i cant join it from the other 2k3 server. I've added it to the domain in the properties of my computer, but it keeps saying its not available even though it appears to be running. (

dynamik

Squirrel23 wrote: »

I'm totally new to server tho, so having a few teething problems! Can I network the XP pc running virtual PC the two virtual 2k3 PCs??(

Yes, play around with the network configuration for your VMs. You'll have a few different options. You may need to adjust your host firewall as well.

Squirrel23 wrote: »

Also I've made one of the 2k3 servers a DC and i cant join it from the other 2k3 server. I've added it to the domain in the properties of my computer, but it keeps saying its not available even though it appears to be running. (

Can you ping it? If so, you probably have your DNS wrong. You'll need to set the DNS server to the DC; the ability to find DCs and join a domain relies on DNS.

calaverasgrandes

One thing that occurs to me; I wonder how accurate it is to learn on VMs. I do software support at my day job. One thing I run into a lot is that thing we thought were great with our software running on a VM dont work in the real world. We also get people running our stuff on some VM configs that totally breaks our software.
The developers kinda chuckle and roll their eyes when I mention this. Like VM-ing is a known problem?

dynamik

Very accurate. There shouldn't be any difference as far as something like that goes. It's an increasingly common practice to run enterprise servers in VMs. I'm in the process of setting something like this up with one of our clients now.

My guess is you're working with relatively clean installs for your testing, and the incompatibilities occur as a result of other applications, updates, etc. that the person experiencing the problem has.

calaverasgrandes

That is definetly the case for a lot of our users. Powerdesk for one steps all over our right click menus! we reccomend shellexview to fix this
(ShellExView - Shell Extension Manager For Windows)
VM-ing on a server is a totally differnt case IMHO from setting up a couple of VMs on a laptop to learn servers in the first place.
I know there are a few things that I learned from setting up physical gear that never occurs when you do it in the virtual world. like taking down a subnet by looping a cable on a desktop switch! Might not be on a test, but I am learning this stuff to do work, not for a piece of paper!

wow pretty nifty how it autoformatted that link to nirsoft!

amp2030

As far as MCSA tests go, at least, you can cover everything easily with VMs. And for convenience they're hard to beat: I wouldn't actually install 4 network cards in a real box just to mess around with RRAS... VMs offer you the possibility to build arbitrarily kooky labs, so as long as you don't just follow one from a book (which are built for limited resources/boxes) and make up your own, they're great practice.