Virtual PC...

CorkFenian

Wondering if someone can help me out here would appreciate it, which of the virtual apps available is the best, MS Virtual , VMWare, and XEN (which i believe Citrix just bought recently)...What I plan to do is.....

Get a separate SATA HD for it to improve performance
Install Windows 2000\2003 and setup exchange 2000\2003 on it

I have all above from work, i just plan on making a very good lab environment to look at exchange, AD hands on, its been 20 months since i made step up from helpdesk (was on a pretty good desk,not just a call logging one), and since then have been junior admin\desktop\server\backup\pabx, getting good experience but really want to do exams hands on so experience is there and knowledge as paper exams do not interest me, (1 away from MCSA) have not done a MCP in a while as feel they have been 100% devalued, doing CCNA as have slight experience with regard to Cisco from work, would appreciate a virtual advice plan from someone whos been there and done it..

Thanks in advance.....

Feelgood

VMware is bang on to be honest. There is a workstation version for home PC and you can setup as many virtual machines as you like and create a virtual network between them - hardware dependant of course...

You don't really need that much space if its just for training. 10-12GB virtual drives per VMware is loads, but it is a serious memory hog. Ideally you will need 2-4GB RAM on your machine to run a couple of VM's at the same time..

Vmware also supports virtually all intel based operating systems from linux to windows. Also can run the new version of Mac OS too...

the_syco

Have MS Virtual, with 2 Win2k servers and 1 Win2k Pro, on the one box, but using Terminal from the virtual Win2k Pro to control the two servers, as I would (probably) do if it were real. Am meaning to setup AD on one of the servers, but haven't got around to do it yet.

The newest MS Virtual is pretty good for MS products, but people have had problems installing nix onto it. Fedora goes on with a bit of coaxing, seemingly. Using the above on my home machine (see sig for specs), and it runs smoothly.

Maybe some others may have problems with MS Virtual, but the new one is far better than the older one, imo.

CorkFenian

Thanks guys for the quick reply, configuring it for both options MS and VMWare is ok is it, do ye have it on a separate HD?? , have a copy of VM Ware Server console and Workstation ,was told by a guy at work to use Server Console, don't think u can install win2k server etc on workstation vmware ,am i right??,if ye have any tips for configuring both would appreciate it...thanks again...

Feelgood

CorkFenian wrote: »

Thanks guys for the quick reply, configuring it for both options MS and VMWare is ok is it, do ye have it on a separate HD?? , have a copy of VM Ware Server console and Workstation ,was told by a guy at work to use Server Console, don't think u can install win2k server etc on workstation vmware ,am i right??,if ye have any tips for configuring both would appreciate it...thanks again...

Workstation is fine for what you are trying to achieve...

Get yourself a standard PC with at least 2.5-3Ghz Proc, 100-200GB hard drive and 2Gb Ram and your good to go....

Install workstation, create virtual machines, done...

Just as an indication I can run 3 Linux VM's on an IBM Thinkpad laptop with 1GB RAM (256 each), using 8GB Virutal drives each and it works fine.

CorkFenian

Thanks Feelgood , will check it out..Did u buy the workstation version, just looking at their website and they're charging for it now...

Feelgood

CorkFenian wrote: »

Thanks Feelgood , will check it out..

No worries, there isn't a whole pile of config in it to be honest...

When you create a virtual machine you have to run through operating system install as if it was an actual PC...

Once you have installed say Windows Server, immediately create a clone of the virtual machine before you do any configuration...this means that you have a fresh copy of Windows server that you can clone each time...so everytime you want a new virtual machine you can just copy the originally configured one.....takes about 2 minutes to clone a VM...

Try it out anyway, personally I think its the best piece of software I've seen in years....

Stephen

If you're going to spend money on your lab environment, I'm quite the fan of VMWare ESX. We run all our test stuff on it.
I use Windows Deployment Services to deploy a sysprepped windows 2003 image to new virtual machines, takes only a couple of minutes to get something up and running.