MCITP

WorkingLunch

I would like to sit 70-640 next Friday, and then do one exam a week for 3 weeks, fairly aggressive but I think its possible, I'm going to set myself up with a decent spec PC for my VM's, does anyone have any ideas what I should be looking at budget is about 500 euro but need to get something secondhand in the next few days.

do I need to buy vmware workstation ? how much would it be for the MCITP I know I can download windows server, can someone share their experience of putting these bits together as I'm looking to get setup this week.

Thanks!

Cuddlesworth

For a home farm, ESXi on a separate pc. If you can push it, a 200+gig SSD, 16+ gigs of ram, a quad core and another large traditional drive for VM parking and storage will do everything up to the MCIPT Enterprise.

I have a similar rig and will be picking up the SSD, since my current setup (dual 256mb Dell Perc5 Raid cards, Raid 0 on six 10k Raptors, a older 128gig SSD and a raid 5 array with 10k 300gig SAS drives) is lacking in hard-drive power and slowing my farm down plus adding huge single points of failure.

As for your aggressive schedule, its doable. But it will show up on the transcript and it might come up in a interview or at later stages as to how and why you achieved it in that time. A more constant training schedule over a long period of time(now till when you die) is the best idea.

WorkingLunch

Thanks for that, sounds like an awesome setup, might be out of my league price wise.

I was thinking would i be better off renting some servers somewhere in the "cloud" it might be easier and cheaper in the long run, my home PC is fine for day to day stuff..

Cuddlesworth

A small 128gig SSD, cheap quad core and 16gigs of ram should be possible for 500. Your not buying a expensive gfx card, fancy case etc. Try the building and upgrading forum for suggestions. Upgrade the storage as you need but it should do you for now.

ESXi is free, the enterprise features which you won't be using are not.

WorkingLunch

Thanks for that, sounds good spec wise, not much out there second hand so I've knocked off a couple of emails to a couple of hosting providers. I've 15+ years exp as a systems admin and have a bit of free time at the moment just a bit rusty at the latest and greatest tech, a bit of a learning curve as I'm coming from a 2003 server background, never fully looked after servers from the ground up. i.e. created group policy, replication, DNS etc just maintained .. It all seems a bit black magic but have the CCNA and vmware courses done.. doing things in reverse is fun..!

whitelightrider

Im in the same boat - spent most of my time maintaining but very little actually starting from the ground up.
Plan is to get Citrix under my belt (work requirement) and then concentrate on MCITP.

Burgo

Total build cost: €481.65 + €30 shipping
Crucial M4 128GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5") €149.09
16GB-Kit G.Skill Ares PC3-10667U CL9-9-9-24 €76.30
Xigmatek Asgard, ATX, ohne Netzteil, schwarz €31.61
Super-Flower SF500P12P 500W €32.51
AMD FX-6100 Prozessor, Boxed, Sockel AM3+ €124.83
ASRock 970 Extreme3, AM3+, ATX €67.31

Slightly over budget, only problem is if you need it asap.

WorkingLunch

Thanks man, that is a very nice piece of kit for the price, can't believe ram costs so little these days.

@Cuddlesworth:Which version of ESXi is free I can only find trial versions for 60days, also would an open source virtualisation hyervisor like virtual box work ?

Cuddlesworth

That machine is good. Feck, makes me think about dropping the workstation I'm using for that. Two SSD's and it could run at least 16 VMs easily at once.

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/overview.html

Register for a 5i license here. It will be free, you will be asked to run a 60 day trial for the enterprise version when you install.

nightowl

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

For a home farm, ESXi on a separate pc. If you can push it, a 200+gig SSD, 16+ gigs of ram, a quad core and another large traditional drive for VM parking and storage will do everything up to the MCIPT Enterprise.

I have a similar rig and will be picking up the SSD, since my current setup (dual 256mb Dell Perc5 Raid cards, Raid 0 on six 10k Raptors, a older 128gig SSD and a raid 5 array with 10k 300gig SAS drives) is lacking in hard-drive power and slowing my farm down plus adding huge single points of failure.

As for your aggressive schedule, its doable. But it will show up on the transcript and it might come up in a interview or at later stages as to how and why you achieved it in that time. A more constant training schedule over a long period of time(now till when you die) is the best idea.

Checkout the specs for my training PC

I got laid off last year and spent six weeks going through the Microsoft MCITP books. I'm working in IT Operations again and wish I had that time to study again it was a blessing. The nice thing about dual booting is I don't need a second machine.

PC make: Alienware
Processor i7 quad core CPU 2.67GHz
Memory: 15GB

Hard drive 1 500GB and Hard drive 2 500GB 7200rpm, RAID 0, SATA II, OS Windows 7 Ultimate

Hard drive 3 7200rpm 1TB (Backup drive)

Hard drive 4 Solid drive 240GB 3.5 inch, OS Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with Hyper-V role installed

Graphics Card Nvidia GeForce GTX 580

phily2002

Sorry to hijack the thread but my questions about MCITP so thought I'd put it here rather than starting a new thread. Anyway I want to do the MCITP, there's a course in Dorset college for 2k, would you recommend this or would I be better off getting books and studying myself. I have A+ and network+ already. cheers Phil

Cuddlesworth

phily2002 wrote: »

Sorry to hijack the thread but my questions about MCITP so thought I'd put it here rather than starting a new thread. Anyway I want to do the MCITP, there's a course in Dorset college for 2k, would you recommend this or would I be better off getting books and studying myself. I have A+ and network+ already. cheers Phil

I'd say the home training route, it gets you into good habits for your career in IT. MCITP Enterprise is possible from home training.

Faolchu

phily2002 wrote: »

Sorry to hijack the thread but my questions about MCITP so thought I'd put it here rather than starting a new thread. Anyway I want to do the MCITP, there's a course in Dorset college for 2k, would you recommend this or would I be better off getting books and studying myself. I have A+ and network+ already. cheers Phil

that course is only 6/8 hours a week so you'll be given the books and will most probably have to self study the material anyway, the advantage is you'll have preconfigured servers etc set up identical to the labs in the manual you'll be given so there will be no need to build a network at home and try configure it from scratch.

the disadvantage is the labs in these manuals are designed for preconfigured servers so they reference user accounts and servers that are already set up and you cant gain access to the VMS used in the class, the college/trainer cant provide them to you so you cant set it up at home and keep doing the labs in your spare time.

the other thing is if you've little or no previous server experience it can be a little heavey coz it goes into certificate authority, DNS config file & print config, group policy config etc. theres a lot to take in if you havent covered some of it before.

also dorset dont have the exams prebooked so its up to you to book them if you pay teh exam fee as part of your registration. so you'll have to book the exams yourself through them and sit at your pace, the exams are not set ever 6 weeks or what ever. so basically you do one of the 3 courses and book yoru exam when you feel ready but you could be working in class on the second course while studying the material at home for the first exam, it can get confusing (from experience) but the guy currently teaching it is spot on and very helpful

Cuddlesworth

Faolchu wrote: »

the advantage is you'll have preconfigured servers etc set up identical to the labs in the manual you'll be given so there will be no need to build a network at home and try configure it from scratch.

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

Burgo

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

Faolchu

Burgo wrote: »

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.

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

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