70-291 - Where to start

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I passed my 70-270 and 70-290 around a year ago and lost all motivation

I need to pass my 70-291 and 70-284 to complete my MCSA before looking at other MS certfications

I have the MS Press books for both exams, however I dont know where to start when it comes to setting up a lab and learning it

I have my work laptop which is the following spec and a Technet subscription for the software

Dell Latitude D630
T7300 @ 2GHz
4GB Ram
150GB Free Space
Windows 7 Pro X64
Windows Virtual PC with XPMODE

So I have VPC available to create a virtual environment, will this be sufficient?

Thanks

Andy

 

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I am in the same boat as you in terms of studying for 291.... actually my exam is in 1 week. However I did notice that the MS Press book will have you build a lab from beginning to end... I would recommend that you just get the OS installed and patched and ready to go and the book will have you configure, troubleshoot, setup, etc...

As for your system, for the most part it will be okay... if you could get more ram that would be beneficial to you. At one point when you have multiple servers with client OS on at the same time it can get pretty sluggish.

 

Thanks and good luck for your exam!

I would upgrade the laptop to 8GB, however convincing my boss of the £200 cost might prove a little harder!

I'll dig out the books and follow it over the weekend and see how I go

Thanks

Andy

 

More RAM would definitely benefit you, its also worth checking what HDD its running (if its a 5400 RPM drive that will slow things up as well).

It will run them just be prepared for some serious sluggishness.

 

I upgraded it to a WD Scorpio Black 320GB drive so it should ok, however the alternatives would be a 500GB Seagate Hybrid drive or maybe a 160GB SSD, however the SSD is very expensive and not a lot of space for VMs

I'd like vmware workstation as I have the trial on my laptop currently, but again its another expense.

Would MS VPC in 7 be sufficient or would something like virtualbox be better?

 

You're fine with that drive... you won't need more than 15GB per Server OS at most and 8gb for workstation OS...

I think VPC is enough to do your studies... there's also vmware server that you can get for free.

 

I didn't even do any of the labs in the book but I read through them and had a server with VMWare where I played with anything that was unfamiliar to me as I studied.

I would recommend something like CBT Nuggets or Testout to use alongside the MS Press book as I found the video training really useful along with the official books.

Good luck both of you.

 

Agreed... I actually watch the CBT nugget videos and do the exercise they teach at the same time...