How big is your lab?

Hey all,

i'm wondering since i'm starting with the mcitp server administrator path, how big is everybody's lab?
I'll be setting up my lab in VMware as followed:

- 3/4 2008 servers (2 regular 1/2 Core servers)
- 6/7 Windows 7 clients
-1/2 Windows XP Clients

Would this be enough to lab my way throughout all of the course?
Any info or adjustments etc supplied will be helpfull!

Kind regards,

Pirader.

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kj0

I've found that 4 servers isn't enough for me. I currently on have two right now, as I am rebuilding my whole lab set up due to my HDD's not coping too well.

You want more servers than Clients as Clients will just be for testing things like RMS and certificates.. 2 win7 should be more than enough, I'm getting away with 1, You could possibly have an XP client to shake it up as some sites may still run XP clients here and there (Although I would consider upgrading them quickly) Save the resources for Servers.

You may end up with.
Servers:
DC1
DNS Server
RMS/Certificate
Federation
Server Core

You may then want to add Subordinate servers as well, and then create new Domains in the forest.

pirader

kj0 wrote: »

I've found that 4 servers isn't enough for me. I currently on have two right now, as I am rebuilding my whole lab set up due to my HDD's not coping too well.

You want more servers than Clients as Clients will just be for testing things like RMS and certificates.. 2 win7 should be more than enough, I'm getting away with 1, You could possibly have an XP client to shake it up as some sites may still run XP clients here and there (Although I would consider upgrading them quickly) Save the resources for Servers.

You may end up with.
Servers:
DC1
DNS Server
RMS/Certificate
Federation
Server Core

You may then want to add Subordinate servers as well, and then create new Domains in the forest.

Allright thanks for the heads-up.
Well over here in Belgium, most corporates are still running XP clients and are slowly making their way to upgrading to Windows 7.

So i might install around 7-8 servers then and just 1 xp and 1 windows 7 client.
How many core servers do you have installed?

kj0

i currently have 1 ServerCore, but that's one I installed last night. It's there for me to make a Subordinate CA server.

I vary my resources depending on what the server will run. so only 1 core/CPU, 1Gb Ram, 10gb HDD for Server core, my DC is 2Core/CPU, 2Gb RAM and 20GB HDD, the rest are all below that spec.

Have 2 clients of each in that case, and use one of the XPs for practicing upgrading steps.

xkaijinx

Do you have any links for specific labs to do from technet? I can only find a few of the step by steps..

bdub

Personally I used 8-10 VM's throughout the MCITP:EA exam track. Out of those 1 was server core and 1 was client.

Everlife

Here is the setup I have been using:

SERVER01 (CONTOSO.LOCAL - SITE1) - 1GB; Server 2008 R2 Ent.; 3 NICS (1x bridged, 2x LAN segment); DC, DNS, RRAS
SERVER02 (CONTOSO.LOCAL - SITE1) - 512MB; Server 2008 R2 Ent.;
SERVER03 (CONTOSO.LOCAL - SITE1) - 2GB; Server 2008 R2 Ent.;
SERVER04 (CONTOSO.LOCAL - SITE2) - 1GB; Server 2008 R2 Ent.;RODC
CLIENT01 (CONTOSO.LOCAL - SITE2) - 1GB; Windows 7 client
SERVER05 (FABRIKAM.LOCAL) - 1GB; Server 2008 R2 Ent.; 2 NICS (2x LAN Segment); DC, DNS, RRAS
SERVER06 (ACCT.FABRIKAM.LOCAL) - 1GB; Server 2008 R2 Ent.2 NICS (2x LAN Segment); DC, DNS
CLIENT02 (ACCT.FABRIKAM.LOCAL) - 1GB;Windows 7 Prof client
CLIENT03 (ACCT.FABRIKAM.LOCAL) - 256MB; Windows XP Prof client

kriscamaro68

You may want to build everything on Hyper-V just to get some hands on with that as well. You can always use vmware for the clients.