Advice for creating home lab environment

bugzy3188

I am currently working on the 70-680 which is the first of the five tests to get my mcts cert. I have finished all but 2 of the CBT Nugget videos along with doing at least 40 questions per day from a brain **** for about a month now. I am almost confident enough to take the test but it is really hard for me to put a lot of the knowledge gained to practical use seeing as I only have one pc, thus no server, no actual windows installation (I know its possible but I dont want to risk losing anything) and basically no network period. I dont think I will have an issue on this exam but future, more server focused exams are going to be tough, Im a great learner but I can't learn without physically doing what it is that I am trying to learn.

So I am going over a few options in my head and looking for any advice pertaining to these ideas or otherwise. My first idea is the most expensive, however if I am careful it can be done within reason. This consists of getting my hands on 2 more PC's, making one a dedicated server and the others part of a domain, along with the hardware and software needed to simulate an established network. I already have a buddy who is willing to sell me a laptop that exceeds the Win 7 reqs for only $95, so that just leaves one more cheap pc, a router, and Win server 2008 (please correct me if I'm wrong).

The next idea, or thought i guess, is to use VMware, however, I am completely unfamiliar with this software, I know that It can emulate another barebone PC to install which ever OS you would like and what not, but I am wondering if this will be able to simulate an actual network environment. Any info on this software and its relevance to my needs would be much oblidged.

I know there are a lot of folks out there who are fine with braindumps and vids but I am actually more concerned with the random scenarios given in an interview after I am certified than actually getting certified, the only way for me to truly understand what I am learning and how to apply it in a professional environment is to try and simulate one as accurately as possible from home. Thanks for any info guys

jayc71

VMware server or workstation will do what you need, as will other hypervisors such as Virtualbox. You'd need VMware's baremetal hypervisor to emulate a full network switched environment (or other types of software), but the hosted versions will allow you to either directly connect VMs to your existing network or create a host-only network so that your VMs will only connect to each other internally. You will be able to create a basic network which allows your Windows VMs to communicate as if they were on a physical LAN, which is sufficient for most lab testing scenarios.

When it comes to performance with a basic virtual home lab, RAM is usually your bottleneck. I'd suggest a 64bit multi-core machine and as much RAM as you can afford to stuff into it. Good luck!

cyberguypr

Welcome aboard. Before the guys grill you let me politely tell you that we do not do **** here. We are geeks who work hard to obtain certs and be able to prove we know what we claim we know. If you are willing to destroy those ****, stay around and you will learn a thing or two.

Having said that, many exams, including 70-680 make you an MCTS. The 5 tests you are referring to actually make an MCITP Enterprise Admin. Also, you do not need all that stuff to create a decent lab. A regular workstation with 16GB RAM will suffice. Utilize any flavor of virtualization (Hyper-V, VirtualBox, vSphere, VMware Workstation) and you'll be good to go. All virtualization solutions provide virtual network components.

Last, search is your friend. We touch regularly on labs so go ahead and read through some threads and come back with questions. Good luck!

IT Explorer

I read this number a lot here in the forum: "16GB RAM" , while seeing the MS training kit's hardware requirements of Most of MCITP exams "8GB RAM", even for exchange server it is "8GB RAM", could any one tell me if there is any other considerations for the RAM, or it is O.K with "8GB RAM" ?

bdub

IT Explorer wrote: »

I read this number a lot here in the forum: "16GB RAM" , while seeing the MS training kit's hardware requirements of Most of MCITP exams "8GB RAM", even for exchange server it is "8GB RAM", could any one tell me if there is any other considerations for the RAM, or it is O.K with "8GB RAM" ?

Mostly this depends on how you'll be using the system. If it's only going to be a VM host than 8gb is fine.

What I found to work the best for me though is that I run 2008 R2 as my desktop OS with Hyper-V installed. I've got 16gb of ram so that I dont need to turn on/off my VM's all the time and I can just leave them running 24/7 and still use my machine for everything I use it for.

joehalford01

I'm running 8GB of ram on a Windows 7 machine with an i7 processor. I can run about 5 virtual machines before it becomes too much. One thing I havn't been able to do is properly create an RRAS server that works as a VPN server. I can't seem to get traffic into the virtual machine network (out works fine->internet), I'm not sure if it's a limitation of using virtual-box with a single NIC or if I'm missing something. Either way though, it's been enough for me to work through 75% of the labs in the 70-642.

IT Explorer

It's obvious for me now, I asked this question cos. I'm about upgrading my RAM to be sufficient to finish the MCITP and Exchange Server 2010 .
Thanx bdub and joehalford01 for your responses.

ptilsen

I have to really tout VirtualBox as the way to go here. It is faster and easier to setup than Vmware Workstation, Server, or Player. If you have a workstation with 8GB of RAM or more and a quad-core processor, you should be just fine to have 2-4 VMs running in a lab. Setup is a breeze and the interface is friendly if you're fairly new to desktop virtualization. Unless you have a spare quad-core box with 8GB of RAM, I wouldn't recommend ESX or ESXi -- these certs really do not call for a dedicated hardware setup given what the average desktop has these days. Ironically, I really wouldn't recommend using HyperV for your virtual environment unless you really want to lab Hyper-V for 70-643.

Personally, I run a six-core Phenom with 16GB of RAM. I run 2-4 VMs with one or two virtual processors and 1-4GB of RAM each. I frequently forget they are running and go do other things, and I don't notice. I had more or less the same experience on my Core 2 Quad with 8GB of RAM, though virtual RAM was a bit tighter on that. Still, you can lab just fine in any virtualization component with 8GB of physical RAM.

bdub

ptilsen wrote: »

I have to really tout VirtualBox as the way to go here. It is faster and easier to setup than Vmware Workstation, Server, or Player. If you have a workstation with 8GB of RAM or more and a quad-core processor, you should be just fine to have 2-4 VMs running in a lab. Setup is a breeze and the interface is friendly if you're fairly new to desktop virtualization. Unless you have a spare quad-core box with 8GB of RAM, I wouldn't recommend ESX or ESXi -- these certs really do not call for a dedicated hardware setup given what the average desktop has these days. Ironically, I really wouldn't recommend using HyperV for your virtual environment unless you really want to lab Hyper-V for 70-643.

Personally, I run a six-core Phenom with 16GB of RAM. I run 2-4 VMs with one or two virtual processors and 1-4GB of RAM each. I frequently forget they are running and go do other things, and I don't notice. I had more or less the same experience on my Core 2 Quad with 8GB of RAM, though virtual RAM was a bit tighter on that. Still, you can lab just fine in any virtualization component with 8GB of physical RAM.

I went this route when I first started down the 2008 path, previously was using ESXi for 2003 certs but the box I was using was not x64 arch. I'm admitted performance whore though, I hate waiting, and I just couldnt stand how slow VirtualBox or VMware Workstation are when compared with ESX or HyperV. On top of that I only had 8gb of ram in my system at the time so if I wanted to game or something I would have to shut down all my VM's. I dont know about anyone else but I hate waiting for domain controllers to boot up.

Going the HyperV route has worked great and I dont regret it at all, not only is it faster, but it really doesnt take much time to setup. It also allowed me to play with things like RemoteFX which is pretty cool. The only downside I can even think of is rebooting the physical box takes longer due to the HyperV service shutting its self/the VM's down.