Lab help

[Rosco2382]

I am starting to prepare for 72-680 Exam, I read that reading coupled with labs is the best way to set myself up for success on this test.

Where is a good place to start to build a VM lab on my PC. Software, programs stuff along those lines?

Though I am afraid my current PC won't be able to support a lab set up, I'm looking into building a better suitable one by the end of the month. Any recommendations I should get minimum to support this? Any and all helps is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[ITMonkey]

Plan to go virtual; use ESXi or Hyper-V or VirtualBox. You could assemble 3 or 4 physical PCs and network them together, but that is probably the least taken road for most lab'ers. Running all the OS's in a single physical computer is best.

You should look for a desktop or laptop with lots of RAM and HDD. Just how much depends on the technology you are studying. For the 70-680 (685 and 686) certificates, only two or three guest VMs are needed: one for a Server 2008 with AD DS, DNS and DHCP roles, and the others for client OS's. My first lab was an old Dell x86 desktop which I upgraded to 4Gb of RAM, added a 2nd 500Gb HDD, and did a clean-install of Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate -- at a total cost of around $215 through Craigslist postings over a 3 week period. (One or two 4-8Gb flash drives come in handy too when you lab Windows Deployment.) The software after this was free: Oracle's VirtualBox and evaluation copies of Windows Server 2008 (the original Server 2008, not R2, because my PC was 32-bit).

I am now studying for two certificates: Virtualization and Server 2008 R2. For that end, I needed a x64 PC and more RAM. I ended up with a lab machine with 16Gb RAM (8Gb would work), and two 1Tb HDDs and two 128Gb SSDs. I also bought an annual Microsoft TechNet subscription, which gives me access to just about all the software the company publishes or used to publish. Hyper-V is my host VM, and I will tend to have 3 to 5 guest VMs running at any one time --depending on what services are needed for any particular lab.

The Hyper-V host Server is installed on a HDD within a VHD. I use bootmgr to boot between various host OSs (Server 2012 Full, Core and Server 2012, etc). The SSDs are tied together as RAID 0, and I keep my guest VMs on them. The VMs come up and down screamingly fast -- it is a pleasure to lab using SSDs!

The lessons I learned from having these two lab machines is that a x64 machine having the minimum of 8Gb RAM capacity is the way to go. You can add HDDs using external drives; but indulge yourself with at least 128Gb SSD capacity for holding the guest VMs. You can do all of this on a laptop, but having a full-tower desktop gives you flexability to add components to it (additional RAM, a 2nd LAN adapter, couple of monitors, etc). A good argument can be made buying an inexpensive server or two through eBay or Craigslist, and use your existing PC to configure them using Remote Desktop. (My wife nixed the server idea ... she didn't like the idea of our study room becomming a server room.)

So that's the hardware and software angle. The next showstopper is the network setup within the VMs. If you are like me and never had to deal with AD DS, DNS and DHCP, this is intimidating to say the least. Some certificate-oriented books give instructions for the initial setup. Some don't. The best one I've come across is in the beginning of Microsoft's 70-643 Training Kit. The first couple chapters give step-by-step instructions in setting up AD DS, DNS, DHCP, NAT and WDS. Everything is done within Hyper-V. You learn to make snapshots (so that you can repeat a lab again and again). And WDS makes creating new servers and clients a breeze.

Hope some of this helps.

[Rosco2382]

Thanks for the info, I appreciate all your help. I am debating if I should go VM or live, I have two laptops with Windows 7 Home Premium, my current computer and then buy an old server. Then I just would have to probably buy the software. As I plan on moving forward with more Certs as I move along in school as well. I have a lot to figure out as I wanna start by Jan 20th with the labs.

Thanks again.

[certhelp]

I am debating if I should go VM or live, I have two laptops with Windows 7 Home Premium, my current computer and then buy an old server. Then I just would have to probably buy the software. As I plan on moving forward with more Certs as I move along in school as well. I have a lot to figure out as I wanna start by Jan 20th with the labs.

You don't really have to buy software unless you need to. You can get Windows 7 Enterprise evaluation for free. You can also use Windows Server 2008 Evaluation for free. Just for 70-680, you only need these two. You can run them under virtual environment on a laptop or desktop/workstation. With sufficient RAM and CPU you can run a few VMs. For virtualization, you can use the free VMware Player or Oracle VM VirtualBox.

I am not certain but you can get by with just two virtual machines for 70-680 exam prep.

Also, if you are a student at a local community college or university college, you can get MSDNAA/Dreamspark for free. It will also give you software licences required. But, just for 70-680, most of what you need are available for free.

[ITMonkey]

There is one additional plus to using a VM environment: being able to make a snap-shot. If you take the physical machine lab approach, you will do a lot of backup and restores after each lab. You might even mess up an installation on one of your PCs and have to do a fresh installation of Windows. Whether using VirtualBox, Hyper-V (and Virtual Player?) you can take a snap-shot of the state of the OS, do a lot of configuration, and when you are finished, revert to the machine state at the time of the snap-shot. You can do lab exercises again and again with minimal effort involved in getting back to the pre-configuration state. If you screw up an install ... who cares, you delete the VHD (virtual disk representing a physical disk) and try it again.

But if you feel more comfortable lab'ing with physical machines, another option for you would be to install Server 2008 or R2 on one laptop and connect it to your other WinPro laptop, networking through your internet router/switch. You'll ought to have a decent idea of how to configure the DHCP function on this device, though. AD DS and DNS roles will want to have static IP addresses.

[Rosco2382]

Thanks a lot, I set up VirtualBox on my PC for now to see how it handles. I am cruising through the book and starting to play with the labs. Having a little issue with AD DS and DNS but found some stuff online to help me figure it out. Once again thanks for all your help everyone and I hope to be testing next month.

thanks again!

[NamaSayaRuben]

I took this exam last year and used my laptop which had a ton of memory and HDD space and a quadcore CPU. I used Virtualbox. Remember those commands! :P