Simulator SW for MCSE

binarysoul

Currently I don't have a lot of hardware to setup a network to study for MCSE exams. Do you know of a good simulator to study for MCSE courses?

msteinhilber

Why not use VMware or MS Virtual PC or similar? You can get VMware Server for free or MS Virtual PC free as well. Any relatively modern PC with enough RAM should be able to get you all the hands-on you need for the MCSE and if needed memory is dirt cheap these days anyways.

Having said that, the only simulators I've ever used were the little lab sims built into the Testout CBT's (which are just brief simple do this, do that tasks) and a simulator that came bundled with one of the texts used in a Server 2003 class I had a couple years back - I forget who made that simulator but it was terrible. If you really want to shoot for the MCSE, definitely see if your PC can handle a handful of Server 2003 virtual machines (use a trial copy for Server 2003), it's really the only way to do it right IMO.

bwcarty

A computer with a quad core processor and 4GB RAM and 50-100GB free disk space will give you more than enough power to handle several virtual machines running for your MCSE lab. Download VMware Server or Virtual PC for free and get trial versions of 2003 Server to cut your costs.

Ahriakin

I did mine with 4 VMs on a single core Athlon 3000 with 1.5GB of ram, Just juggle your resources and you won't need anything high end for the host.

msteinhilber

Ahriakin wrote: »

I did mine with 4 VMs on a single core Athlon 3000 with 1.5GB of ram, Just juggle your resources and you won't need anything high end for the host.

That's the truth. When I took classes a couple years back, I had my IBM T60p notebook then. Single core, 3GB ram physical maximum - I was able to run 4 instances of Server 03 and two XP clients virtually. It was a big sluggish, but not completely unacceptable.

binarysoul

Thanks a million guys

It was an awesome suggestion to go with virtualization. I'm using MS Virtual PC and it really rocks.