MCSE home lab

JJJJNR

What software would I need to do the MCSE in a home lab setup, currently have a T43 IBM laptop and cant afford to upgrade even the HDD which is at 40 Gig. 2 gig ram. Single processor.

Do I download a copy of vmware? is there a tutorial on how to get vmware working anywhere, is there any free versions of vmare that will work on my poverty spec laptop.

Ginger

You can download VPC 2007 for free.

You can also use VMWare Player but you will have to have the VMs created first.. VMware server is free (not the ESx version)

You can then use the 180 day trials of Windows Server 2003 to build your lab

testicle

If your processor doesn't have Virtualisation support, you can forget Hyper-V, VPC, VMWare or any hypervisor based virtualisation.

JJJJNR

Pentium M Processor 750 1.86GHz Damn, anyone want to recommend me a laptop? pref from adverts that will support this.

Coyote

if your ok with it not being a laptop I bought a HP server very cheep that are very good value.
HP ML115 'Ideal Virtualisation Testbed' Bundle £238.95
or
HP ProLiant ML115 G5 Tower Server £189.95
you need to ring them as the website won't let you order to Ireland but delivery is about €20
the extra ram for £38 to make it 8GB and the 500gb hard disk (£32) would be good as well.
I have 4GB in my server and it's not enough.

I got my server from elara.ie but the best price they have is €328 it does not have as good a hardware but comes with 3 years support. it was under €200
HP ProLiant ML115

if you can get a monitor and keyboard for the first week or so when your testing and setting it up you can then install vmware ESxi or XenServer and 120 day trial copy's of windows/server/exchange and control them from your laptop.

Coyote

Standard Toaster

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/End-user_documentation

VirtualBox will work fine on your laptop.

JJJJNR

Seriously didn't even think about remote desktop, great suggestions all. really going to help.

testicle

The_Edge wrote: »

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/End-user_documentation

VirtualBox will work fine on your laptop.

It's Hypervisor virtualisation, so it won't.

JJJJNR

The remote desktop has got my imagination going and I'm just thinking out loud here but would it be possible to rent a server from a hosting service for a couple of months and do my labs on there.

I've never used any hosting but would that be possible, would work out much cheaper than forking out a lot of money on hardware I probably will just sell on.

Coyote

there is some thing to be said for just renting rack space, I have a few friends that do that.
I can't say if it's better or not someone else might know. (I have started to look at amazon cloud myself)
for myself I like having the quick option of just switching out drives to change from
ESXi, XenServer and using windows with vmware and having a very fast option to reboot, rebuild
or just mess with network settings/DNS/DHCP that probably would mess up a server that needs
to be online all the time.

As for selling it after you got your MCSE that sounds a bit silly as your learning does
not stop after you get your cert. there is so much more to learn than just what you need to pass a exam.
learning exhange/sql/citrix/oracle or hundreds of other things.

worst case you can use it as a media streaming server (to your PS3/XBox)/backup server/download server.
If i had some spare cash I would be buying 3 more of the server I listed before to run clustered XenServers but thats just me.

Coyote