70-410 lab advice/books

Howdy,

Just planning ahead for once I'm finished with my Network+ which is the MCSA in Server 2012. Currently looking at material now for 70-410. I've ordered the Craig Zacker book, is that enough in terms of books or will I need something else like Don Poulton's book instead?

Next question is regarding labs- I've no idea where on Earth to start or what to use as a lab design. My plan was to buy a HP Gen 8 Microserver with 16gb of RAM, install Server 2012 R2 and then add Hyper-V and create whatever VMs I actually need to simulate a working environment. Am I along the right lines here? Or is there a website/guide with recommended lab setup?

Again it's all rather foreign to me creating something from scratch, I do a little bit of simple AD stuff at work but beyond that, not very much!

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cruwl

I found the Craig Zacker book to be worthless and a wait of money. There's a thread from last week were a few other people feel the same.

I am using the Microsoft Training Guide (which is also not great), the Sybex mastering 2012 R2 book and the Cert guide book.

16Gb of ram is a good start for a lab box and you should be able to do most things just fine. I picked up a used poweredge 2950 with 32Gb of ram off ebay for like $160.00 shipped.

awilson

Any reason why it's not worth it?

cruwl

If you are new to windows server it does not go into enough detail in my opinion for you to truly understand the technology. It seemed to only cover the whats new in 2012 rather then teach the material.

awilson

Any advice in regards to labs? I only just found out now that you need Server 2012 Datacenter in order to you more than 2 VMs, which is what most people wind up doing, correct? And what do people do from there? Have one as a Domain Controller, one for DNS, WSUS etc? Or have several things run under one VM?

This is all so confusing to a newbie.

poolmanjim

You will need Datacenter to have more than 2 VMs on the server. However, I have to admit, I'm not sure if that is a hard limit or a soft one that MS enforces via CALs and what not. Either way, you can download Server 2012 R2 Datacenter for a 180 evaluation license. Install that on your server and run as many VMs as you can reasonably configure.

With a 4 Core CPU and 24GB of memory I comfortably ran around 8-12 VMs at most on my primary lab computer. That accounted for a 2x DCs, 2x File Servers, 2x Workgroup servers (off domain for Server Manager labbing), 1x DNS Server (playing with non-AD integrated stuff here), 1x DHCP Server (Also File Server), and a handful of client systems and random servers to test things like AD Install from Media and Group Policy.

To be completely honest, if you button down and are okay with turning off VMs to light up different ones you could even run a lab with 6 running VMs and cover the exam objectives.

Rocket-sG

The craig zacker book is a joke, and you can find the pdf version online for free without much trouble.

And thats how much it is worth in my opinion: worth-less

It is more of a brochure than a book and if the 410 was an open book test and you had the Zacker book in front of you....you would not even get a 30% on the test.

ed_003

i think the zacker book gives u a very brief overview of the objectives! and one must do some research on each subject to get more of an understanding. I use mastering server 2012 R2 along with the Zacker book because it goes into detail on the subjects..

cruwl

poolmanjim wrote: »

You will need Datacenter to have more than 2 VMs on the server. However, I have to admit, I'm not sure if that is a hard limit or a soft one that MS enforces via CALs and what not. Either way, you can download Server 2012 R2 Datacenter for a 180 evaluation license. Install that on your server and run as many VMs as you can reasonably configure.

This is incorrect info. Both standard and datacenter allow you to use as many VMs are your hardware will support. The License you have for standard allows you to re use the exact same license 2 more times in virtual machines running on the same host. Datacenter allows you to run as many VMs as your hardware will support with the exact same license. If you are running a lab using a temp license any way none of this matters. If your in production then this matters. These limits have no baring when it comes to other OSs as VMs.