Lab Platform question

rhauser44

New member here and I'm a complete noob in the virtual world.

I have limited funds and I was wondering if the platform below would host a few images to allow me to conduct the 70-642 labs:

For sale is a Dell PowerEdge 1850 Server

4gb Memory (ECC DDR2)
Dual 3.2ghz Xeon Processors
Dual On-Board Gigabit Network Interfaces
Dual/Redundant Power Supplies
Dell Remote Access Controller (DRAC) for lights-out management
Dell PERC RAID Controller
Two 74gb RPM SCSI Hard Drives
CD-Rom Drive
1U chassis

Thanks!

marcels

Hi rhauser44,

If you mirrior the drives I think you might find the disk space could be a bit low.

Its recommended that you use a min of 32GB for Windows 20008 R2. The 70-642 labs in the MS Press books require up to 3 machines, so it depends on how many VM's you want to run.

That said I'm using my Windows 7 PC with 2GB RAM, 2.2GHz Core2 processor 250GB hard drive. I'm using VMware Server and I can run two VMs fine, 3 is a bit slow so I'm looking at upgrading the RAM to 4GB and installing Window 7 64bit.

So you could use your laptop/workstation as an option.

Stuppored

If I was you, I'd take a risk... take out a loan, borrow on credit card - just not from friends. You call your own shots. Purchase a mid range machine capable of passing the exams. When you're all done with the exams, sell the machine, atleast you'll have papers to help you find employment that much easier. You've gotta take a serious approach to this ~ it's a potential investment that can land you a serious paying position if the cards run your way. If you're already employed in IT, ask your boss to support you - just be straight about it - be serious.

I'd have to say RAM is your prime concern. I think I read somewhere that with each consecutive VM running in RAM, an extra amout of RAM is wasted, so you have to account for that... I'm sure someone has the page bookmarked somewhere. Friends of mine have run with 6GB, still having issues when getting to the more extreme labbing scenerios. I'd suggest 12GB to be sure fire that you won't experience those unpleasant issues. Can't go wrong with an I7 ~ it's a quad core processor! As well, spanning images to mulitiple hard drives will take the pressure of I/O bandwidth on a single drive. I see no reason for RAID... you can always **** files for backup if need be. As for overhead, ESXi on it's own server box where you connect remotely with vSphere client (a free download from VMware), appears to run the least amount of overhead ~ you simply connect to the VMs over a network connection.

Good luck!

Essendon

I have an E4600 Dual-core machine with 4GB RAM running Windows 7 64 bit and havent had any real performance issues. I can run 5 VM's, maybe 6 (havent tried 7) and still get by. More than 90% of the time, the VM's are just sitting there doing nothing.

You might need to throw some hard disks in, but apart from that your good to go man. But like the previous poster said, if you got the dough spend it wisely and build yourself a decent machine (with an i7 or something similar) and your good for life, so to say.

MentholMoose

4GB of RAM is a bit low, but not too bad. The main problem is probably the CPU. Most likely it doesn't support Intel VT. Every virtualization program requires VT to support 64-bit Windows guests, so without VT you won't be able to run Windows Server 2008 R2 in a VM (it's 64-bit only). This is a problem because R2 is now covered on 70-642.

za3bour

Well I have a Toshiba laptop with 4 GB of ram and 2.2 i3 CPU I'm running 5 VMs at the same time (two R2, one 2008, one core and one XP) with no problem whatsoever.

You just need 4 GB of memory and you can upgrade HDD when you need to. I would say for testing purpose any decent PC/laptop would do it for you. The only concern is that you need 64bit platform for Windows 2008 R2 to work.

rhauser44

Thank you all for your thoughts & recommendations. Coming up with some extra funds to put together a better platform seems like the best approach.

As Stuppored mentioned, I can always sell it afterwards to recoup some of the money. And if I decide to keep it, I would want something more towards the mid-level range that can handle what ever the next BIG THING will be.

earweed

A lot depends on the processors that you have in that setup. Do they support VT?
Also do you have room to put in 1 or 2 more HDDs? Can you add more memory?
If you answered yes to all 3 see how much it'll cost to upgrade that one and compare that price to buying a beefier Server.
If doing heavy duty labbing you'll want at least 12 GB and 3 or 4 HDDs.
But as to your original posting that setup would be fine for labbing the 70-642 and 70-640.

ehnde

Had to throw in my .02 here. Virtualization is supposed to be scaleable. If the xeons support VT, you could use what you have until it's too slow, then maybe add in another cheap machine and migrate some of your virtual machines over to it. That's a win for your checkbook