70-410 - Don't hate me!

I'm sorry, I am sure that this has been done to death.

I've been in IT for 17 years and never sat any exams. I currently work monitoring and supporting Windows 2008 / 2012 servers.
The work I am doing is not that in-depth, so it isn't really helping with improving my skill sets.

My employers have tasked me with gaining an MCSA for Windows 2012, and I feel the starting point for this would be 70-410.

I have access to CBT Nuggets through work, and I know that this isn't enough to get skilled enough to do the exam, or be able to undertake the work in the real world. Can anyone recommend a good book that I could use to aid my learning? I am planning on setting up a lab at home using a HP Microserver, running on VMWare and having a few VM's (Windows 2012 and Windows 200

, and accessing these via vSphere on my Laptop.

Can anyone offer any advice, tips etc to help my development with this?

Thank you.

Mike

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Comments

lsud00d

First step of advice...why run VMware?! Unless you already have it licensed/installed as the base hypervisor, try nesting Hyper-V Server 2012R2 and running the VM's that way. VMware will not help you in the MCSA Server 2012.

TheAngrydog

I already have VMWare installed (Free license from VMWare). I am also wanting to run one of my VM's as a Media server.

The company I work for, our customers use VMWare so felt it best to get familiar, and I work 150 miles away from home, so being able to connect back to my servers in vSphere seemed the best idea?

srabiee

I highly recommend the book Mastering Windows Server 2012 R2 by Mark Minasi (Sybex), which can be found on Amazon. This book thoroughly covers the topics for all three MCSA: Server 2012 R2 exams. Depending on your level of server experience in an enterprise environment, it may be comprehensive enough as a sole study source (with lots of labbing, of course). It's a great book.

Once you get to the chapter regarding Hyper-V VM creation, management, migration, etc, you will want to nest several Server 2012 R2 VMs with the Hyper-V role installed within ESXi. You can also do this on VMware Workstation (I believe) if you want to use desktop hardware. Studying for this exam doesn't require server hardware by any means.

Good luck!

TheAngrydog

Thank you for your reply srabiee, very concise!

My experience isn't great, I have spent most of my "career" doing desktop and software support.
Would it be feasible to use my 2012 R2 test server and set up VM's on that using Hyper-V for when I get to that chapter? My server is going to be a "production" server as it is going to contain 2 VM's that are going to be used for storage and media serving. Or can I simply set up a Hyper-V hypervisor on top of VMWare and then install servers on this?

Sorry for the idiot questions!

Thanks.

ETA: Thats a big book! Over 1550 pages!

srabiee

Are you running ESXi on that HP server? If so, you should be able to nest a couple of VMs running 2012 R2 w/ Hyper-V on there. Then you can cluster those Hyper-V servers and use them to build out your Windows VMs and domain. So ESXi --> nested Hyper-V servers --> Windows VMs running on Hyper-V cluster. I haven't run a nested lab up to this point myself, but I hear many people have had good luck with it, especially when using desktop hardware to save money. (still requires a good bit of RAM though)

As far as the technical details on how to get it to run properly if you encounter errors, I'd have to leave those questions to the guys who are experienced with nesting Hyper-V within ESXi.

pjd007

If you're running windows 8.1 (think it works on 8 as well) then use Hyper V to host your VM's, this massively helps towards passing the 410 exam because you become familiar with the console and more specifically what you can and can't do in certain situations which you can be questioned on.

The mastering book is recommended on here though I think people struggle to identify which chapters are relevant to the 410 exam (I'm sure I read the book is 1000+ pages).

I used CBT nuggets, training guide, technet and the technet virtual labs plus measureup and transcender test exams but I'd go with measureup out of the two.

Labibing is key to passing the exam.

Louie1277

Well I have the HP miniserver at home. What I did was install hyper-v then used my laptop with virutalbox and created my vm win8.1 machine. With that I then remote into the hyper-v server using the server management software to create the VM. that way you get us to moving around hyper-v.

The book itself I have the 1000+ one and man it's a very big one.

TheAngrydog

Thanks all. Can I not run Hyper-V and VMWare at the same time then? The company I work for, all of our customers use VMWare now, so Hyper-V would be useful mainly for me to pass the exam?

My laptop has Windows 8.1 and 8gb of RAM (Upgradable to 16gb). Would it not be best to set up some servers on that?
I plan on using the 6 month licence that MS provides for Windows 2012.

Thanks.

bub9001

Louie1277 wrote: »

The book itself I have the 1000+ one and man it's a very big one.

I have it sitting on my Desk, it's been there for 5 months now. I have read maybe 50 pages total out of in all that time. It is a huge book, no doubt. But I like how it has screen captures for everything, just cannot bring myself to dive head first yet.

Well maybe tonight I will get my head in it more?

catak

I agree, bub! I have yet to find a book that's not "dry" and that tends to lose interest in the first few chapters. I'm in need of something that provides informative information with side by side labs to encompass and drill the information. Any suggestions you come along in your search? Thanks.

TheAngrydog

So my VMWare install died on me tonight as I was copying over an ISO to it and will now not boot up.

So I am left with two choices - re-install it or install the HyperV hypver visor direct to one of my drives and use that for my VM's.

Does anyone have an experience of installing HyperV direct to the server rather than via Windows 2012?

Thanks.

pjd007

TheAngrydog wrote: »

So my VMWare install died on me tonight as I was copying over an ISO to it and will now not boot up.

So I am left with two choices - re-install it or install the HyperV hypver visor direct to one of my drives and use that for my VM's.

Does anyone have an experience of installing HyperV direct to the server rather than via Windows 2012?

Thanks.

I've never installed it but it's just a scaled down version of the standard install so it should be straight forward.

jfmcaninch

I installed the Windows 2012 R2 Free Hyper-V a few weeks ago. It is a straight forward install and can be further configured with powershell and sconfig. Excellent practice for 70-410. I did a bit of googling a few times when I hit any snags but was quick to do and worth the effort. Best part is the Hyper-V is free and can use for all the MCSA/MCSE path and beyond, there is no expiration date.

TheAngrydog

Cheers.

I'll stick HyperV on my other "server" I think as I managed to sort my VMWare install on my HP Microserver - the drive failed.