Starting my lab

So I finally got the money to put into a lab. I have a budget of around $750 to $1000. My goals are CCNA Voice, CCNP and then may be CCNP Voice. Anything I should aim for that will cover all 3 or avoid? There is so many choices on Ebay I am very confused. I do know I need a 26xxXM, haven't figured out the differences yet (2610, 2620, 2660). For server I have my quad xeon server with 9tb of drive space and 6 gigs of ram (have another 6 ready to go in). I need to get going and get motivated.

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tokhss

let me save you the time and bs i went through..

CCNP:V
stay away from 2600's ... move yourself over to the 2800 chassis. This will align with 15.x IOS.

CCNP: have at least 1 3560 power or 3750 power and 3 3550's or 1 3550 and 2 2950/60's

reason i placed the 3560/3750 is for the POE aspect of it vs the inline only ...(old IP PHONEs inline vs New IP PHONE poe)

When i first started out, i got myself a 2650xm... lets say as i progressed, i found very little room for this in my voice lab. just adding voice DSP's to it was not as smooth as the 2800's and did not meet the flexibility of the 2800's

check out my lab.. its spec'd for CCNP and CCNP:V ... i just recently postd up info on the CCNP:RS forums.

goodluck.

now, if budget wont allow.. then get yourself 4 x 3550's for around 400 on ebay.

Also, for server, you dont need something crazy... VMware it and just stack your ram up to 16-24 gigs and your gold. you wont be using your CPU as much as your ram..

example.. any quad or even dual core with 24 gig of ram will do it.. even the old C2D 6600's will be fine. just up your ram.