[Faolchu]

Originally Posted by Burgo

Yeah that definitely sounds like a disadvantage to me, what do you learn from having it all built for you?

that depends on the course i guess, self paced server administration courses would not benifit from preconfigured labs, it would be more advantageous to just have a server and you do all the groups, accounts and policies etc.

Originally Posted by Cuddlesworth

I'd have said that was a disadvantage. Starting from scratch is priceless.

i meant from the point of view of the books that are supplied when you sign up to the course in dorset college. the 70-640 courseware uses the 6425B or C book which has labs designed with specific groups/accounts in mind so the preconfigured VMs make it easier to do the labs in the courseware in this specific book.

for example the 6425 courseware has labs about setting up user accounts and joining them to multiple groups, applying group policy to one use and not another based on group membership etc the AD setup for these labs has hundreds of user accounts and groups preconfigured. so if you follow this courseware and these labs it will be difficult if you dont have these VMs to go by. all microsoft classroom training courseware is like that to my knowledge. remember that phily2002 was asking about the classes in dorset college and that place provides the MS courseware and those books contain lab that have specific server builds/configs in mind


I guess i should have gone further in my post and said that if he was to self studying then starting from scratch is the best way to go. because you get to build the domain from the ground up, use the various methods of creating groups/accounts etc. also if phily2002's only background is the A+ & Net+ with minimal server admin exposure (an assumption on my part) then i'd recommend getting his hands dirty on a self paced/self build type approach that way he learns from the ground up and gets to have more fun with the servers.

the course in Dorset College covers the 640, 642 and 646 exams i think

[WorkingLunch]

Just to update the thread, got setup really quickly once the hardware arrived, that site is unbelievably fast at sending out the bits, putting the PC together was very easy, getting ESXi installed was again very easy, longest part was downloading the image from microsoft. After that it took some time to setup the servers as I was getting various errors on installing my first server, turned out to be a corrupt .iso and once I had uploaded again it worked. Regarding the MCITP, well I've been reading and reading chapters and reading the exam crams, so now im going to start at chapter 1, I've learned so much already its embarrassing I didn't just do it before..!

[testicle]

Ah, but are you learning anything?

[WorkingLunch]

Learning loads, I'd recommend it over a course, anything to add to the thread ? if not move on.

[WorkingLunch]

Just going to add this link to free MS training videos on youtube..

[krankykitty]

I see Microsoft are going back to the old MCSE labels!

A New Era in Microsoft Certification