MCITP lab

vishal_mcitp

Dear all,
I would like to move from service desk to servers. I want to setup MCITP lab. I have following hardware setup
3 No’s HP elite 8200 desktop, 2 HP elite book notebook, 3 Cisco switches
Could anyone guide me to setup MCITP practice lab please?
Regards,
Vishal Kundaikar
Goa India

tbgree00

My current lab is set up on one dell tower server. I installed the free VMware esxi on that. I have a technet subscription so I got the latest images and installed a couple of 2008 R2 virtual machines and went to work with that.

If you can get the trial of 208 R2 up and running on your desktops you would have a good canvas to work with. I would (and have) grabbed the Skills measured portion from the microsoft learning website and make sure you're comfortable setting up each of the roles as best as possible. Technet has a lot of good up to date documentation as well for how to install the roles and features.

ITMonkey

Your thread is in the Windows Server 2008 folder, so I assume that your lab will be for learning Server 2008, 2012 R2 or 2012. This is what you need to find out...

First: does any of your PCs support these server OSs? The HP documention for your desktop PCs limits support to only client/desktop OSs (i.e. Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7). Server OSs might not be supported, but can still be found to run on the unsupported machine -- then again, they might not!! The same can be said for your HP notebook PCs. What you may find is that the OS loads, but that drivers do not work (and will never work). For instance, if you lan drivers do not work, you will not be able to network servers to clients, or even access the internet for updates.

Second: I believe most people you find on these forums lab with virtual machines rather than many physical PCs (and the network devices connecting them). Virtual machines are so much easier and lab with; they are also more economical. The hypervisors you read about most often are ESX, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, Virtual Player, Windows Virtual PC, and so on. ESXi is made by VMWare, and is the most recognized virtual machine software provider in the industry. Hyper-V is a role you can find in the Windows Server OSs; and it is free (as are the other hypervisors including ESXi, I believe -- other VMWare branded products involve a paid license, though). To support a hypervisor, there will be various processor and BIOS requirements. Without meeting the requirements, the hypervisor will probably not even install successfully, let alone work.

There is a lot of good things to be said about having VMWare knowledge and experience. IMHO, I believe it is better for a novice to use Hyper-V first. Why? You'll find many training lab configurations and step-by-step lab exercises using it. More and better lab documentation than you will find in a mixed ESX and Windows Server lab. A novice will probably waste time trying to work through the problems they encounter because of the mixed environment. Monkeys like the KISS rule: Keep IT Simple and Stupid (... but make your boss think it is Difficult and requires a Genius).

Third: TechNet Subscriptions are great -- only that, for some reason, any purchases for the Indian market must be done through a Microsoft Retail Center rather than through the internet. See Note #1 on this TechNet Subscription web page.

Hope this helps.

Essendon

Great advice already in the thread, I too second the use of Hyper-v for labbing up for Microsoft exams. Expect to get tested on Hyper-v on a few exams. It may be a little painful to setup the whole thing initially, you'll need to get your head around the networking aspect of Hyper-v for example. But once you nail the setup, you'll do just fine. ESXi is easier to setup and navigate around and any companies value any experience with VMware ESxi in general, but for MCITP labbing purposes, stick with Hyper-v and you wont go wrong. I have never needed TechNet, all you need are the trial versions and they are readily available from Microsoft.