Lab suggestions

Xapt3r2ooX

I am currently studying for the 70-680 exam and it is going to be my first MS cert. I have a tower and a laptop that i have. I am unsure on how i should lab for this exam and would like your suggestions. I will work on 70-685/70-686 once i finish this exam, so I would like to know if my setup is fine enough to lab for those exams as well. I am devoting to about 6-8 hours of studying a day except weekends.

Software: Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2k8 R2, VMWare Workstation

My lappy specs are:

Intel Core2Duo T8100 2.10GHZ
4gb of RAM

Tower specs are:

AMD Athlon X2 3800+ 2.00GHZ
3gb of RAM

Both of my computers are currently running Windows 7 Ultimate. Will the laptop be able to handle all the virtualization fine? Or will I need to include my tower PC? If there is any other software you recommened, please mention it. Thanks!!:D

Asif Dasl

The only thing that comes to mind is your lab will be pretty slow but should work fine for labs and such, just not many VMs open at the same time. The Core2Duo has VT extensions so you'll be able to run 64 bit OS in VMs. It'll probably be the workhorse machine of the two. The desktop can run 64 bit OS in VMs too but would be slower by about 30%. But you should be able to run 1 VM on the laptop and login to a VM on the desktop fine, and that's all you'll really need for 70-680, 70-685 and maybe even 70-640, 70-642, 70-643. It'll be slow but will work fine.

Xapt3r2ooX

Awesome thank you. Would it be a better idea to multiboot with my laptop with Windows Server 2k8 R2 and multiboot my desktop with a clean copy of Windows 7 ultimate? I am wondering if 2 machines will be all that i need. Deployment is what I am not too good at so I need to practice it a lot. I am looking to buy a new machine in the near future, but my budget is pretty tight right now

Asif Dasl

You could do that I guess, it can get a little messy though. But with VMs you have the advantage of snapshots. I don't think things will be very slow, slow to boot the VMs but once loaded things should be OK. I used to have an Athlon X2 5000+ 4Gb system and could load a Vista VM no problem, so you should be OK with Server 2008 and Windows 7. At a push you could get 2 VMs running on both machines, so your 2 machines should be fine.

Xapt3r2ooX

Nice. Thanks asif. I ordered the lab manual from the Press book. it should be here next week. Once i finish all the testout labsim modules, I will go ahead and start on it. I also have labs some generous member from the forums sent me which I have been completing. The labs on testout for the 70-680 are a complete joke lol.