noob help

bmcdevitt

Hey guys, this is my first post, i was helping to get some help and recomendations for what i should do.

The situation is, i am currently a "PC Technician" (AKA i get people off the programmers backs so they can get there work done), we have been having server problems with configuration and overall performance,so my job offered to pay for my classes and tests to get my MCITP for Windows server 2008, i called springhouse and asked them to sign me up for a begginner coarse for this, they signed my up for 6421A, and i was completely lost (wasted like 2400$), after this i told them that was not begginner they than told me another class to sign up for, i signed up waited about 2 months for it and the day before they cancled...... I dont know what to do now.

i was hoping some of you guys could point me in the dirrection of what to study first ( 640, 642, or 646) what order? also what should i get to study it on my own, i figured it learn it all on my own instead of going the classroom route, and than id go to a bootcamp one of the week long cramming things to get it all fresh in my head again for the test's.. i dont even know how well these work, im just completely lost and dont know where to start learning. I have pritty much no server experience besides the hardware, and adding new users, only complete simple stuff like this.

Please help me of where to start and what the best way to go about this is, i have about 6 months to do this. I can study at work when people dont need me and than when i get home. So basically 10 hours a day i want to put into this, i have a love for this type of stuff and a great curriosity so this will not be torcher for me.

Thank you for reading this, and thanks for any awnsers in advance, im sorry i didnt go threw thousands of pages looking to see if this existed before but i searched google for hours on where to start and skimmed threw this.

bmcdevitt

40 views and no reply : ( , no one like's me here haha....

ITVince

You didnt try very hard to search for answers....this entire forum is dedicated to these exams, read through threads and you will find all the information you need.

Start with 640, then 642, then 646 thats the recommended order. Read threads that are stickied at the top of this forum for a compilation of good information for these exams.

ITVince

Purchase a self-study book for 640 and get yourself VMWare to setup some virtual servers to begin practicing.

bmcdevitt

thanks for the response, i will do, i have a referbished box im running win srvr 2008 on, i cant remember if its r2 or not, part of why i asked what to study first is ive been told the exams have been updated for r2, and that things have changed, either way, i will order the self study book claymoore had put up, and mabye the other 3 he has there. Thanks for the response i appreciate it.

ITVince

bmcdevitt wrote: »

thanks for the response, i will do, i have a referbished box im running win srvr 2008 on, i cant remember if its r2 or not, part of why i asked what to study first is ive been told the exams have been updated for r2, and that things have changed, either way, i will order the self study book claymoore had put up, and mabye the other 3 he has there. Thanks for the response i appreciate it.

Just take it a step at a time, have a plan, and stick with it, otherwise you'll get a little overwhelmed. Atleast I was...now i'm on a slow but steady track. Good luck with your studies. If you have to make a few investments (purchasing books, more ram, some HDD's a new machine even...) it's worth it to me in the long run.

joey74055

yep, home labs are the best way to learn because they are hands on. Get a book and get a server or two setup and start off by following the book...

bmcdevitt

well just built my pc about 4 months ago.... only problem is im running on 6 gigs of memory not 8 because one was bad -_- , also i kindof wanted to run like 2 512 gigs on RAID, but i went with a 1tb, so im hoping it doesnt go bad on me less than 2 years.... yeah i agree about the overwelmed, i was supposed to have this done by now, anyway i ordered the first book and its in the mail... thanks for the tips

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bmcdevitt

BTW, vmware.....

Whats the best way to get a lab going, you mentioned Vmware.... i have MSDN developers subscription at work, so i have keys to the OS's i need, but does Vmware cost money? ive made images of computers before to give to my boss, but im not sure if he pays for it or what... whats the price for Vmware if i wanted to run like 5-6 virtual servers or is it free? Im guessing this is the best way to go about labbing since this is what it seems like everyone else is using.

When i was at springhouse the teacher told me he would look away if i wanted to copy there virtual lab software, unfortunately i didnt bring an external hard drive only cd's i didnt realize it would be like 20 gigs of memory, but anyway i couldnt do that so now i have one box running win srvr 2008 standard, and thats it so far : /

earweed

If you have that one box running 2008 (has to be 64 bit) then install the Hyper-V role. If you can as your machine must meet requirements Hyper-V Getting Started Guide but if what you outlined above is your box you should be ok.I'd probably install 2008 R2 on there as that is what the tests cover now.
I'd get more than on HDD and spread your vms across them so your IO doesn't present a bottleneck.
If you bought the whole set of MS Press Training Kit look in the 643 book for some good instructions on how to start using Hyper-v.
I built my own server a while back (i-5, 12 GB RAM, 4 HDDs) and started using Hyper-V to lab and will only use VMWare workstation on my laptop now as I can do that anywhere. If I'm home it's labbing with Hyper-V

cyberguypr

I can't emphasize enough the importance of labbing. This makes a big difference on how fast you absorb knowledge and undertand the technologies you are studing.

To answer the VMware question, you want to look into ESXi. That is the free VMware version that will completely change the game for you. No need to spend any money to create a lab. Take a look at Free VMware vSphere Hypervisor: Bare Metal Hypervisor (Based on VMware ESXi). There are many YouTube tutorials that will help deploy this. In my case, I deployed ESX on an old HP DC7600 I got off eBay for $100. I upgraded to 4GB RAM and put a 1TB drive for the virtual machines. That's all I needed for mu MCITP-EA studies.

bmcdevitt

earweed wrote: »

If you have that one box running 2008 (has to be 64 bit) then install the Hyper-V role. If you can as your machine must meet requirements Hyper-V Getting Started Guide but if what you outlined above is your box you should be ok.I'd probably install 2008 R2 on there as that is what the tests cover now.
I'd get more than on HDD and spread your vms across them so your IO doesn't present a bottleneck.
If you bought the whole set of MS Press Training Kit look in the 643 book for some good instructions on how to start using Hyper-v.
I built my own server a while back (i-5, 12 GB RAM, 4 HDDs) and started using Hyper-V to lab and will only use VMWare workstation on my laptop now as I can do that anywhere. If I'm home it's labbing with Hyper-V

yes my girlfriend calls that my baby... but what would you prefer since you use both, Hyper - V or VMware? I believe stuff on the tests has info i need to know about Hyper - V so it might be worth it for me to learn how to set this up, but i could be wrong.... I use Vmware everyday but have never set it up from scratch, can i install the OS from scratch on it over and over to get multiple virtual servers, or do i need to make an image with VMware.

sorry for such simple questions... i do appreciate the feedback i am getting

earweed

By VMWare do you mean workstation or ESxi?
I used workstation and you can set up VMs pretty easily from scratch.
You can do this with Hyper-V or you can get VHDs of the OS and use them as that's also pretty easy to do once you've done it once or twice.
Hyper-V is covered on th 70-643 so it'd be a good idea to learn how to use it. The main thing though is to set up a lab environment you're comfortable with. Labbing is the biggest thing to learning most of this stuff especially if you don't deal wityh it in your work. People who have actual server experience through work have a lot easier time with studying the MCITP material.

bmcdevitt

i went with Hyper -v which i love btw.....but im having a virtual connection problem,
i can ping my server running AD with the virtual server im running core on, i am trying to join it to the domain and it fails, but i cannot ping the core with the srvr running Ad, any ideas what i did wrong?

ITVince

bmcdevitt wrote: »

i went with Hyper -v which i love btw.....but im having a virtual connection problem,
i can ping my server running AD with the virtual server im running core on, i am trying to join it to the domain and it fails, but i cannot ping the core with the srvr running Ad, any ideas what i did wrong?

You have two Virtual Machines running server core? One is setup as a Domain Controller with AD DS and DNS and you're trying to join the other to the domain as well? Is this what you re saying? I dont understand.

If you have one box setup as your domain controller / DNS server, you need to configure your second server core box's IP address and DNS settings to point to your primary DC, whatever the IP address of your primary server is, must be your secondary core servers DNS address. So if your primary core boxes IP is 10.10.10.1 the DNS of your secondary must be configure to 10.10.10.1. You can then join it to the domain and promote it to a domain controller using dcpromo with your answer file.

bmcdevitt

great, thank you!... im an idiot, i blame it on not enough sleep

you were right, i missed step 2.5, netsh interface ipv4 set dns name="Local Area Connection" source=static address=10.0.0;11 primary