Virtual lab setup 70-410/11/12

Ok so I was thinking about reformatting my laptop and using it as a virtual lab to complete 70-410/70-411/70-412 exams.

I'm thinking install a server core data center copy of server 2012 as main os then adding hyper-v to that.

Anyone who has done the exams know how many virtual servers/clients would I need to add for studying the topics in the above exam objectives?

The idea is to get it all setup and snapshot so its all ready to go whenever I have spare time and want to study whatever topic I want.

I have 8gb ram and a 256gb SSD drive so resources are limited

Thanks.

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gabypr

Hi, when I decided to start studying for the 2012 MCSE Server Infrastructure I was worried about not having enough resources to virtualize the proper environment to study. Right now im studying only to 70-410 and I have only needed a Win8 and a Server 2012 virtual machine. Im using virtualbox in my sony vaio 8gb with a new 750gb 7200rpm HD to store my virtual machines and stuff. I can run various instances of server 2012 although somewhat slow when I run various vm's, but its enough for me to practice.

I have to see yet if I need more resources to properly study for the rest of the exams *cross fingers*

Probably you will have better performance because of your SSD, the problem is that if you use it for your everyday probably you will get short of disk space. If you decide only to use to study I think you wont have problem.

If you get short of hard disk you can replace your dvd-rw drive and insert a second hard disk. A western digital hd with 750gb and 7200rpm just like the one I purchased cost me $90.

Good luck!

dazerski

I basically just started 70-410 today because the book finally arrived but over the last week I built a box with a Core i5, 16gb Ram and a 1TB drive. I have no idea what is required but hopefully this does it. Just to test it, installed Server 2008 R2 with hyper-v, 4 other 2008 VMs and 2 Windows 7 VMs. They all seemed to run fine when they are all simultaneously powered on but they're not doing much. Hoping it does ok with 2012

joey3k

hi,
just curious regarding the HDD requirements... right now I am running win 2012 and win 8 on separate PC's for a more "office" type of feel. but I want to start using Hyper V on my laptop. I have a 180GB SSD... i'm planning on only dedicating between 10-20gb per virtual machine. just curious as to why you guys are requiring so much disk space, is it due to having multiple snap shots?

or maybe i am missing something?

just curious
thx

dazerski

I'm pretty new to Hyper-V considering most people's experience. I've used VMWare Server quite a bit and noticed one difference that I like about Hyper-V's VHDs more than VMWare. When I would use VMWare, it would force me to specify the HD size before I build the VM. In Hyper-V on 2008, it seems to just use what it needs and expand as you go. Is this correct? That is what I'm seeing.

In other words, VMWare makes you set aside 20GB for example whether you use it or not. Hyper-V just expands the drive as you put more on it taking more from your physical disk.

Again, I'm pretty new to this but that is how I'm seeing it. Let me know if I'm complete wrong about this!

earweed

joey3k wrote: »

hi,
just curious regarding the HDD requirements... right now I am running win 2012 and win 8 on separate PC's for a more "office" type of feel. but I want to start using Hyper V on my laptop. I have a 180GB SSD... i'm planning on only dedicating between 10-20gb per virtual machine. just curious as to why you guys are requiring so much disk space, is it due to having multiple snap shots?

or maybe i am missing something?

The larger HDDs some people have are not really needed. The speed of the drives is actually more important and in some cases using only 1 HDD will cause the VMs to run slow since they are trying to use the same I/O one the HDD. I built a whitebox (computer/server capable of running ESX) while studying 2008 and have 5 smaller HDDs as well as 2 quad NICs so that the I/O on VMs is minimized and the virtualized network isn't doing as much of the work.

joey3k

earweed wrote: »

The larger HDDs some people have are not really needed. The speed of the drives is actually more important and in some cases using only 1 HDD will cause the VMs to run slow since they are trying to use the same I/O one the HDD. I built a whitebox (computer/server capable of running ESX) while studying 2008 and have 5 smaller HDDs as well as 2 quad NICs so that the I/O on VMs is minimized and the virtualized network isn't doing as much of the work.

thanks for the reply.. i'm going to setup a virtualized lab on my laptop which has a i7 processor and 16gb of ram. i *might* run the virtualized OS's on a USB 3.0 ext HDD, but i'm going to test to see how taxed the system is by just running them off of the SSD drive first. my only concern that you just reminded me about is the NIC. hopefully the built in NIC on my laptop can be used on the virtualized machines. i'll let you know on Monday how it goes. it's a thinkpad X230 so *crossing fingers* it will work.

earweed

you can run a bunch of vms without having more physical nics. If you're only running 3 or 4 at once you shouldn't have any problems.

joey3k

thanks for the reply earweed!
much appreciated.

will let you know how i make out sometime this week.

Essendon

dazerski wrote: »

I'm pretty new to Hyper-V considering most people's experience. I've used VMWare Server quite a bit and noticed one difference that I like about Hyper-V's VHDs more than VMWare. When I would use VMWare, it would force me to specify the HD size before I build the VM. In Hyper-V on 2008, it seems to just use what it needs and expand as you go. Is this correct? That is what I'm seeing.

In other words, VMWare makes you set aside 20GB for example whether you use it or not. Hyper-V just expands the drive as you put more on it taking more from your physical disk.

Again, I'm pretty new to this but that is how I'm seeing it. Let me know if I'm complete wrong about this!

Yeah you are completely wrong here

vSphere has this thing called a thin provisioned disk, this starts off small and grows as needed. Good for labbing purposes, not something you'd use in production for SQL/Exchange and other stuff that writes to disk constantly.