70-680 Lab setup and manual

hello,
i am planning on taking the 70-680 exam in three months , at the end of my final semester in college. I have purchased the Don Poulton book, as i have read here that there is a lot of errors on the MS press book. I should be receiving the Don Poulton book this week. My question is; iam not sure if the Don Poulton book has lab exercises for me to practice on and if it doesnt is there a lab manual i can follow other than the one in MS press book.

Also what kind of Lab excercises will i be doing, because iam debating if i should use a bare metal hypervisor(Vmware hypervisor ) setup or just install windows 7 and have virtualbox run couple of VMs running windows 7. i would greatly appreciate any suggestions, iam kinda nervouse about the exam as i have read in this forum , many people have failed it serveral times and also iam taking 4 classes as well in school .

My tower setup :
core2duo e7400 2.8 GHz
6GB of ddr2 Ram
gigabyte Mobo DG418
1 TB of HDD space

i also have 2 laptops one running ubuntu and the other windows home edition premium

thank you for your time GUIS

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Psoasman

Welcome to the forum!

I have been using Virtual Box on my tech computer. It works fairly well for what I need. I have 2 DC's and a client going.

I don't see a reason why you can't use the labs from the 680 book, just have the errata threads available. I would get the exam objectives and lab through them. You will need to know server 2008 /2008R2 material to get through the exam.

btw: if you sign into Amazon, you can read through some of the selected stuff in Poulton's book.

cheeky

Psoasman wrote: »

Welcome to the forum!

I have been using Virtual Box on my tech computer. It works fairly well for what I need. I have 2 DC's and a client going.

I don't see a reason why you can't use the labs from the 680 book, just have the errata threads available. I would get the exam objectives and lab through them. You will need to know server 2008 /2008R2 material to get through the exam.

btw: if you sign into Amazon, you can read through some of the selected stuff in Poulton's book.

thank you

well iam kind on a budget atm, so i had to choose between the Don Poulton or the MS press book, so i went ahead with the Don Poulton one. i logged into Amazon and it was very limited to what i can preview and during that time i did not see any labs, only questions at the beginning of the chapter and some memory tables(which i couldn't preview). So is my choice regarding the Don Poulton book bad :S?

When you mentioned DC's i take it your referring to domain controllers ? iam so new to windows , i come from unix/linux Freebsd/mac environment. So for me to set up a lab .. to pass the 70-680 exam i need to install windows server 2008 r2 and setup a domain controller as well and some windows 7 ultimate/enterprise client VM's?

when you mentioned check the exam objectives , is this what your referring to :
TS: Windows 7, Configuring

i also found the book regarding labs for the 70-640 exam :

Wiley: 70-680: Windows 7 Configuration, Lab Manual, Desktop Edition

so do i have to purchase the official book to pass , sorry for the questions

thank you for your time

universalfrost

poulton is the way to go.

also download the 180 day trial of 2008R2 and the win7 enterprise 90 day trial from microsoft and install them on the other pc's. setup your domain and dabble in active directory, etc.... this way you will learn the commands and steps. this is where most folks mess up, they just read the book, sit for the test and fail it, because 70-680 goes beyond just win7 and you need to know the enterprise portion of it that includes, AD, R2, etc..

Psoasman

cheeky wrote: »

thank you
well iam kind on a budget atm, so i had to choose between the Don Poulton or the MS press book, so i went ahead with the Don Poulton one. i logged into Amazon and it was very limited to what i can preview and during that time i did not see any labs, only questions at the beginning of the chapter and some memory tables(which i couldn't preview). So is my choice regarding the Don Poulton book bad :S?

When you mentioned DC's i take it your referring to domain controllers ? iam so new to windows , i come from unix/linux Freebsd/mac environment. So for me to set up a lab .. to pass the 70-680 exam i need to install windows server 2008 r2 and setup a domain controller as well and some windows 7 ultimate/enterprise client VM's?

when you mentioned check the exam objectives , is this what your referring to :
TS: Windows 7, Configuring

i also found the book regarding labs for the 70-640 exam :

Wiley: 70-680: Windows 7 Configuration, Lab Manual, Desktop Edition

so do i have to purchase the official book to pass , sorry for the questions

thank you for your time

I haven't read Poulton's book, but have heard good things about it.
By exam objectives, I meant Microsoft's official objectives. You can view them on the following link:

TS: Windows 7, Configuring

As far as the lab setup, I would do the following: This is just what I've done, so feel free to experiment some:

1 Domain Controller
1 Server I used to practice deploying images using WDS, MDT 2010
1 Client I used to practice installing and applying images to.

You can get software to practice with from dreamspark or you can download the 180-day evaluation copies of Server 2008 R2. I would get the R2 for any labbing, as that is what Microsoft has moved to.

cheeky

Psoasman wrote: »

I haven't read Poulton's book, but have heard good things about it.
By exam objectives, I meant Microsoft's official objectives. You can view them on the following link:

TS: Windows 7, Configuring

As far as the lab setup, I would do the following: This is just what I've done, so feel free to experiment some:

1 Domain Controller
1 Server I used to practice deploying images using WDS, MDT 2010
1 Client I used to practice installing and applying images to.

You can get software to practice with from dreamspark or you can download the 180-day evaluation copies of Server 2008 R2. I would get the R2 for any labbing, as that is what Microsoft has moved to.

you mentioned you have 1 DC and 1 server .. please bare with me for asking this question , but are you suggesting the windows server2008 that you have is the domain controller and the server or are they seperate machines or VMs ?

the problem iam facing is that iam planning on running windows 7 professional x64 and then use virtualbox to install windows 2008 R2 (should i set up the domain controller in this VM then ?) and then run a another VM (Windows 7 x64 EN).

is that sufficient or do i need another VM running another windows 2008 R2 solely acting as the domain controller ?

my specs for the setup described above :
core2duo e7400 2.8 GHz
6GB of ddr2 Ram
gigabyte Mobo DG418
1 TB of HDD space

will this be able to handle ?

thank you

Psoasman

I have 1 virtual machine running Server 2008 R2, which I've named Server01. this is my domain controller. I have DNS and DHCP running on this server as well.

My other server is also running Server 2008 R2. This one I have been using as a Windows deployment services server and I have installed MDT 2010 on it and am practicing deployment scenarios.

My client is running Windows 7 Enterprise.

So, I have a total of 3 virtual machines running on my tech computer. I am limited by the RAM I have available, since my tech PC is 32 bit,but the VM's work ok.

You can probably lab through the 680 material with just 1 server and 1 client, but it's beneficial to have another server to practice with.

The specs on your host computer look fine. You can give each VM 1.5 GB of RAM and have enough for the host machine to still run.

dazl1212

I have set 1 server up with server 2008, AD DC and DNS and another with Windows 7 Ultimate. I have configured the network settings in Virtual Box as bridged. However I cannot join the domain from the 7 machine

it comes up with an error saying it cannot resolve the name through DNS although I can ping the server from the client. The domain name is MCTS. Can anybody shed any light on this? I have used a few walk through's on-line and cannot see anything I am missing.

Psoasman wrote: »

I have 1 virtual machine running Server 2008 R2, which I've named Server01. this is my domain controller. I have DNS and DHCP running on this server as well.

My other server is also running Server 2008 R2. This one I have been using as a Windows deployment services server and I have installed MDT 2010 on it and am practicing deployment scenarios.

My client is running Windows 7 Enterprise.

So, I have a total of 3 virtual machines running on my tech computer. I am limited by the RAM I have available, since my tech PC is 32 bit,but the VM's work ok.

You can probably lab through the 680 material with just 1 server and 1 client, but it's beneficial to have another server to practice with.

The specs on your host computer look fine. You can give each VM 1.5 GB of RAM and have enough for the host machine to still run.