Starting From Scratch.

Thinking of working towards the 640, 642 and 646 exams.

What set up at home is recommended in terms of server installs to work through the labs etc? Is there a thread where this is discussed?

Thanks

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AlexNguyen

If you're using MS Press books, it's better to setup an Hyper-V environment lab, instead of VMware.
I'm using an "old" HP Pavillon desktop, QuadCore, 8 GB RAM. I've uninstalled vSphere ESXi and
installed Windows 2008 R2 Standard with the Hyper-V role on it.

joshmadakor

If you have spare money, try to invest in SSD drives. It makes world of difference if installing from ISOs. Also, you can run many concurrent VMs with no noticeable slowdown. I have two of these in RAID 0 with Sata6Gbps: Newegg.com - Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) SSDSC2MH120A2K5 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) I get reads at @840MB/sec and it's AMAZING. I can have 3 Server 2008 VMs up and running in less than 10 minutes from scratch. Get at least 8 GB of Ram too.

shnelson

AlexNguyen wrote: »

If you're using MS Press books, it's better to setup an Hyper-V environment lab, instead of VMware.
I'm using an "old" HP Pavillon desktop, QuadCore, 8 GB RAM. I've uninstalled vSphere ESXi and
installed Windows 2008 R2 Standard with the Hyper-V role on it.

Can I ask why you recommend Hyper-V as opposed to vSphere? My thought is that it provides one more medium of familiarity with 2008 vs trying to implement on top of something that would be completely foreign to any MS certs, but I am interested to know if you have a different reason?

Reason I ask is that I'm in the same boat as the OP, but my home lab is all vmware and I'd need good justification to scrap it to go with hyper-v

Essendon

shnelson wrote: »

Can I ask why you recommend Hyper-V as opposed to vSphere? My thought is that it provides one more medium of familiarity with 2008 vs trying to implement on top of something that would be completely foreign to any MS certs, but I am interested to know if you have a different reason?

Reason I ask is that I'm in the same boat as the OP, but my home lab is all vmware and I'd need good justification to scrap it to go with hyper-v

He's recommended this because some of the tests in the MCITP:EA/SA track test you on Hyper-v.

TheCudder

Nesting Hyper-V with VMware Workstation 8 and ESXi 5 | Veeam Software Official Blog

I'm in the same boat as OP, and wondering would the above link be a solution to running Server 2008 R2 with the Hyper-V role, from within VMWare Workstation 8?

shnelson

Ah, makes perfect sense now. Thank you!