Help with MCITP lab please

han.net

Hi there ,

I have started the MCITP EA but with no server experience what so ever . I need to creat a lab for it and have some idea that I want to share with you before going ahead .

I have one PC with Dual core and 2 G of DDR2 ram with 1 sata drive and 2 IDE drive . I know that running a virtuial platform would need a higher Specs !
Therefore I intend to order some parts to build a new PC . I m looking for Quid core AMD 3.2 GHZ , and 4 or 8 GB of DDR£ ram and one hard drive . The idea is to run either VMware or Citrix and install server 20008 R2 on the platform . If you think I m thinking correctly them please advise more , and hoe tyo get VMware version 7 FREE ,or any alternative from Citrix . Otherwise please advise on another way of doing it .

I need to decide today in order to order the parts to get them before the week end .

many thanks

LCA

The more ram the better with 8GB the bare minimum for labbing for Server 2008 R2 exams especially when doing advanced stuff. Re hard drives it pays to have more than one hard drive as using only one for VM's will slow the system down.

For virtualization software bear in mind that Hyper-V is an exam topic so if you are going to use 2008 R2 give some thought to using it.

HTH

han.net

LCA wrote: »

The more ram the better with 8GB the bare minimum for labbing for Server 2008 R2 exams especially when doing advanced stuff. Re hard drives it pays to have more than one hard drive as using only one for VM's will slow the system down.

For virtualization software bear in mind that Hyper-V is an exam topic so if you are going to use 2008 R2 give some thought to using it.

HTH

How and why would using more than one drive make Vmware faster ? do you mean Raid and stripping ??

What is Hyper V ?? and where to get it ?

earweed

I went through the first 2 exams (640/642) using VMWare workstation on the same type of setup you have (dual core and 2 GB RAM) and using just Server 2008 and I'll tell you waiting on that VM to do every little thing really spoiled my enthusiasm.
I built a new PC with Core i5 (AMD quad core should do you fine) and started with 8 GB RAM but increased it first chance I got. Make sure before you build you meet the requirements to run Hyper-V and just use that as it's way better than using Workstation and it's covered on the 70-643. Also try to get 2 or 3 HDDs (7200 RPM for best performance at low cost) as the 70-643 also covers storage and you can play with your storage configurations while studying that.

earweed

han.net wrote: »

What is Hyper V ?? and where to get it ?

Hyper-V is included with Server 2008 and 2008 R2 as a server role. It's a hypervisor that you'll learn about while studying for your MCITP,

han.net

Im afraid that i still dont know what Hyper-V is and if its feree or not and if I should use it instead of VMware ?

RobertKaucher

han.net wrote: »

Im afraid that i still dont know what Hyper-V is and if its feree or not and if I should use it instead of VMware ?

Since it has been stated that Hyper-V is an exam objective you should use Google and do some research.

When you say "VMWare" what are you talking about? vSphere/ESXi, VMWare Workstation, VMWare Server?

Having multiple drives increases performance because in virtualized environments usually the major bottle neck is disk IO. Having multiple drives reduces the wait time to read from or write to a disk by spreading the queue accross a couple disks. It does not have to be any sort of RAID. Having two moderately sized disks (rather than one large disk) with a VM running on a disk other than the system partition means the there is less contention for which program gets to write to the disk.

han.net

Yes , you are right , I thought to do so if I did not get anything , as this the first time I know that Hyper-V is included . I wish for an answer about it . if not then i will do my search .

I meant VMware workstaion , I dont know about the rest !

RobertKaucher

han.net wrote: »

Yes , you are right , I thought to do so if I did not get anything , as this the first time I know that Hyper-V is included . I wish for an answer about it . if not then i will do my search .

I meant VMware workstaion , I dont know about the rest !

If your current hardware can handle it, I would use both.

Build a machine to run Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V but also use VMWare WS to run a server on your laptop or whatever. If you add a little more RAM to your current set up it will run a VMware WS fine.

han.net

I take it that the advise will be , running VMware on my current PC with mabe 4 g ram , and use Hyper-V on the new one with 8 G ram ?