70-290 lab setup requirements

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Hi Everyone, new to the forum, hope this is the right place to be posting !

Looking for some advice on how to setup a lab for the 70-290 portion of the MCSE exam, i was thinking of running VMWARE or something similiar as my wife would kill me if i bring 5 or 6 machines home .

The only problem i can see with this approach and correct me if i am wrong (need all the help i can get) is that you will still need 2 machines as you can virtualize all the server products alongside each other but not run the client (XP) on the same hardware ?

I am trying to keep down the actual physical room taken up and i will invest in a new machine (recommendations gratefully received ) in order to run this lab properly, i tried it with multiple machines in the past and gave up and i am now in a flat instead of a house !

I'm sure that you guys can easily solve my problems here, space is the premium !

 

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A friend mine has virtual pc.

His proper OS is windows xp pro (wont run on home) and he has windows 2000 and win2k3 and another version of windows I think its 98 on the one pc he doesnt have 2 machines.

Where as I have an old pc with windows 2000 and have my main machine which is xp.

 

No doubt about it, VMWare Workstation kicks the pants off all the other products. I use it at home and have a vast array of virtual labs running off it.

It installs on virtually all client operating systems so you can happily carry on with your normal tasks, no need for a second PC. Just make sure you have plenty of memory.

Alternativley the following are free and have most of the features VMWare carries:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx
http://www.virtualbox.org

 

You can most certainly run an XP guest on VMWare workstation
or 3 if you want
or vista
or even something totally unrelated like say.. solaris!


My 290 prep was all done on VMWare workstation, clients, servers, RIS, WSUS and all

 

I have never used the VMWARE software, do you install this before any client/server operating systems or is installed after you have a operating system installed ?, sorry for all the questions but if i can get away with one machine for all of this i'll be a happy man ...

 

You will only need one machine, but it needs a fair amount of RAM, at least a gig, preferably two. The OS is installed first, my machine runs XP Pro (it's my main home PC), you install VMware as an application on top. I'm using VMware server (free from their website) and it'll happily run a couple of Server 2003 domain controllers with two XP clients.

Be happy!

 

The workstation product is an application that installs onto your XP machine (known as the host)
you then install additional machines of any type via that application (known as guests)

 

I've got VMWare Player which is free on my laptop, theres utils you can use to create and maintain images that are also free.

I have Unbutu, XP, 2003 Server and Vista VM images.

I can happily run 2 images ontop of the guest OS, but then I have 4GB ram and 2GHz Core 2 Duo.

So with a powerful laptop you could do it all, you could also set up a destop server if you wanted.

Between the two and a wireles router you could set up a virtual network with 4-5 physical/virtual machines in total.

In most cases you simply need a client and a server, this should get you through the MCSA at least.

 

I'm in love with microsoft virtual PC 2007 at teh mo, and i'm doing my 290/270 aswell at the mo

 

One machine with VMware workstation installed should suffice depending on how fast your host is.

Heres how my setup looks on my laptop at the moment:


Its great, I can run all the machines with no lag at all.

 

Did I just see someone use more bandwidth that could have been used throughout the week? LOL