MCITP home lab setup..

techgeek99

hi there,

i am currently pursuing my MCITP certification. i am interested in having my own test lab.

a bit confused whether to buy a server and install esxi or to continue using my laptop for that purpose.

my budget is 500 aus dollars and is the hp proliant microserver any better than my current laptop which has
i5 processor and 8 gb ram?

any suggestions please!!!!!!

thanks in advance

cruwl

your laptop should be more then enough i would assume.

I personally went with hyper-v instead of esxi since you are studying for server 2008. My laptop is a quad core with 8Gb of ram and runs it just fine. you could also build a desktop instead of buying a server and just use that as well.

but quad core/threads with 8gb of ram should be more then enough to complete the labs for most of the MCSA 2008.

techgeek99

Thanks cruwl, even i thought the same.

just skimmed my machine and its doing well with the 3 VMs for now.

cruwl

Other thing to remember these arent production systems, they recommended minimum is more then enough for the work loads you will give these.

mbmaplethorpe

Hi,

You've got lots of options - I built my lab for 70-640 using https://www.virtualbox.org/ though you could go with Hyper-V or ESXi or VM Workstation, though these are probably overkill for most small labs and have a cost depending upon the licensing.

If you can add more RAM, it makes a big difference on some of the bigger lab setups when you've got 5 or 6 VMs running.

If you do buy a micro server then you can run VMs on both that and your laptop and have them networked - you share the load between your server and laptop then.

Crikey

I built a tower with 12G RAM, i7 proc, 1TB local drive. Used VmWare Player (free), I had a TechNet license from work for the OS part. Enough juice to pass the 70-640, and that's saying something as the lab for FS required at least 6 servers running. That lab was the highest load.

techgeek99

hi mbmaplethorpe,

thanks for your reply.

i am using virtualbox at present, everything is working fine under my lab environment. i have 5 VMs running at a time without a lag.

by the way what materials did u study for the 70-640 exam ?

thanks

techgeek99

thanks crikey,

i am going with my laptop for now, instead of buying any server.

mbmaplethorpe

I used the official MS press book on 70-640, technet and the notes other members have posted here in combinations with lots of labs. Technet was really helpful in passing on 2nd attempt and to be honest I felt I knew much more and was better prepared. I found the book only covered the essentials when it came to larger subjects like RMS, CS and LDS. CS is a pig...so much to take in!

Deathmage

I've been using 2 Optiplex 9020's with max'd memory of 32 GB's on both of them. they have i7's and I popped in a 2 TB drive into one of them. I have a HP 2910al switch at home and a Sonicwall TZ 210 being used.

I currently just have two DC's but I'm really wanting to do more and I have a *cough* copy of VMware 5.1 I'm sure I could use if I knew Vmware, lol to make the Optiplex a VMware host and load up a bunch of servers on it and away I could go.... for now the two servers a barebone Windows 7 computer is my test bed.

Lexluethar

Use this, it's free: TechNet Virtual Labs

Sure you can't setup the exact lab environments that the books lay out - but you can do LITERALLY anything you want. I mostly use the Direct Access and Branch Cache because the servers have multiple NICs.

It's also nice using these free labs because you don't have to revert your changes, after 2 hours the lab resets itself.