Suggesting for setting up lab for 70-290.

Im studying for the 70-290 exam and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how I should setup my lab.

Im planning on using ESXi to create 4 vms'
- Win2003 Enterprise Server (DC)
- Win2003 Enterprise Server (BDC)
- Client #1 (XP)
- Client #2 (XP)

I think this should be good enough to practice....any thoughts?

BTW, im running all this on a xSeries 346 server (Dual 3Ghz Xeon, 4 GB RAM)

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Comments

ElvisG

More then enough.

brad-

u're ahead of the curve

NetAdmin2436

Ditto

This is considered the easiest exam in the MCSA/MCSE track. Your lab will flow nicely into the 291/293/294/etc though. Good luck!

bjay

hi guys
noob here.
planning to set up a virtual environment for 70-290..... and something i can also run dynamips on and i am considering one or 2 options for the machine.
machine 1:
HP Pavilion dv7-2123 64-bit Laptop
(duo core 2,2 Ghz), Cache 1 MB
4 GB/ DDR2 SDRAM (i can upgrade to 8 GB)
1TB (2 x 500 Gig) SATA-hardisk 5400 rpm

machine 2:
Hp, Pavilion m9840 Desktop
AMD Athlon X4 II 620 64-bit
DDR3-SDRAM 6GB
1.28 TB (2 x 640 GB) SATA 3G Hard Disk Drive

will a laptop be ideal?will appreciate any advice and any relevant information

cheers

brad-

bjay wrote: »

hi guys
noob here.
planning to set up a virtual environment for 70-290..... and something i can also run dynamips on and i am considering one or 2 options for the machine.
machine 1:
HP Pavilion dv7-2123 64-bit Laptop
(duo core 2,2 Ghz), Cache 1 MB
4 GB/ DDR2 SDRAM (i can upgrade to 8 GB)
1TB (2 x 500 Gig) SATA-hardisk 5400 rpm

machine 2:
Hp, Pavilion m9840 Desktop
AMD Athlon X4 II 620 64-bit
DDR3-SDRAM 6GB
1.28 TB (2 x 640 GB) SATA 3G Hard Disk Drive

will a laptop be ideal?will appreciate any advice and any relevant information

cheers

Either would be fine. I found it easiest to use Virtual PC. All you really need is maybe 2 virtual servers and 1 client. Giving 512MB RAM to each would still leave you 2.5GB RAM for your host OS if you have 4GB to start.

MentholMoose

dynamips mostly needs RAM if you are going to run a lot of emulated routers, so I think either machine will be fine for that. When studying for CCNA using dynamips, I mostly used my old IBM t42p laptop which has 2GB DDR RAM, a single core 1.8GHz Pentium M, and a 7200RPM 100GB IDE drive, and it was mostly fine (just try to avoid switching loops!!).

For running virtual servers, the laptop hard drive will be a major limiting factor... laptop hard drives just aren't very fast. Three VMs will work, but they will slow to a crawl at times, depending on what you are doing. If you want to use a laptop you should get the fastest hard drive you can afford, possibly an SSD.