VM ware and MCSE

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Guys,

My first post so i will start with a HI! Ive worked in IT for the last few years, doing various Helpdesk roles and a bit of desktop support, so im no newbie but at the same time not an IT guru.

I work in London but live up north, and want to do the MCSE self study(save the pounds), because of travelling between the two locations often, it would make it hard for me to have a physical lab and keep moving boxes about all time.

So i have a couple of questions.

1) If i buy a top spec laptop, would it be possible to do my MCSE using VM ware and have all if not most of the benifits of a real lab.

2) Ive looked at a couple of labs on here and am i right in reading that these are done on one PC.

3) Is there any VM guru's who could help me set my lab up if i run into problems.

Many thanks

Jon

 

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Hi Jon and welcome to CF!

1.You talking about running many many virtual machines so you going to need at least 100GB+ of HDD space and atleat 1GB+ of RAM if you going to be running that many machines at once when you reach exams further down so in other words i wont recommend using a laptop in this situation.

2. Yes lots of labs and scenarios can be done in a VMWare enviroment. The problem like i discovered is that NOT ALL can be done. For example in exam 70-291 you cant see how a DHCP Relay agent works.

3. Yeah i reckon we got some gurus inluding the Sir Ryan aka Phoenix...

hope this helps...

 

Hi Spuddy,

Welcome to the forum.

I did buy more RAM for my laptop for this same purpose, but don't really use it as much as I planned because I am lucky enough to have a test domain at home.

I use Virtual PC/ Server because I had it with my actionpack, although VM Ware is a better product going by the reviews.

It is very handy to have for test purposes but as Zimbo pointed out it might not be able to do everything you want, but if you travel a lot it sounds perfect for you.

Good luck with your MCSE.

Merry Christmas

Si

 

Id personally say 2GB of ram and a smaller hard drive
lets bear in mind most VMs are gonna be 4GB or maybe 6GB at a push,
if u can get both great! but try get a 7200rpm drive or atleast upgrade to a 7200rpm drive as you will find a laptop 5400 drive is quite poor on the performacne front

you can also simulate practically everything including dhcp relay u just need to be working with different subnets and routing between, this is more than doable with vmwares powerful networking customisation

 

Thanks lads


Just a quick one for pheonix, you mention using DHCP Relay Agent on different subnets, does VM ware let you simulate different subnets without the need for more PC's, i do have another PC which if needs be.( but ideally would lke the one).


Many Thanks again


Jon.

 

Hi mate
I was saying you most definatly can do that with a single machine, you just have to play around with the vm network preferecnes

have a look at a big lab i set up a while back, this was all from one PC!

 

that's one big lab you got there phoenix

how much ram does it run on ?

 

Initially it was on 2GB but later upgraded to 4GB
I have the ability to suspend certain systems that are not in use for instance, the only one needed all the time is R1 (the gateway router) the rest can be brought up in bits dependign what im doing
it runs alot smoother with 4GB when i power them all up though
​

 

Welcome!

 

My PC is PIV 1.25GHz Ram. I can't run more than 4 virtual machines T.T So sad. I think I need to upgrade my processor (esp Dual Core). But can't afford it now, waiting for money (

 

I was only able to afford 1Gig of RAM on my laptop but it works for me well enough. For the hard drive space I got the standard 60Gig for the laptop and I went out and bought an external hard drive enclosure for around $20 and bought a 200Gig EIDE hard drive online at a pretty good price so I just hook that up to the laptop and store the VMWare Images on that.

One thing I found nice is that I am able to plug the external hard drive onto my main wrkstation at home and my box at work both of which have a lot more RAM and run the images there as well with no problems.

Also with the large external hard drive I store all of the Windows OS CD's and such as ISO images so when I want to do an install/reinstall I can just pint the VMWare CD drive at the ISO image and it installs a lot faster than by the CD drive and I don't have to worry about leaving a CD behind elsewhere when I need it.

GW

 

Another idea, if you go to www.logmein.com you can get a free account and connect to your home computer wherever you are at so if you have a fast or semi-fast connection at your home you can always connect through the site and practice remotely.

GW

 

Ryan that lab takes the biscuit man, totally awesome!