Home network for MCSE

[Superd04]

Hi, im planning on doing an MCSE and am trying to setup a basic home network for practise purposes. I want to setup a Windows 2003 Server as an active directory dns etc server... and setup another node to work from this server. Whats the best way to connect these devices to function correctly, peer to peer, through a hub, router, switch??
Any help on this subject would really help.. tanx

 

[jshurst]

How many computers do you have?

I think that I would get a router, then set up the Server as the domain controller. Then you have some options. If you want you can get VMWare and install it right on the same computer.

 

[BenChristian]

I've almost completed my MCSE (final exam tomorrow). My lab consisted of a single PC (P4, 1GB RAM) wih virtual PC. I highly recommend this set up. The only time I introduced a second physical PC was when I was playing around with RRAS.

Using Virtual PC, I created a base Windows installation and put all of the tools I need (GPMC, Virtual PC extensions, security patches etc). I then ran sysprep and shut down the VPC session. After that, I copied the VPC session files so that I had an 'image' to play with. Each time a needed to introduce another server, I'd just copy the files from the 'base image', start the VPC session, run through the sysprep mini setup wizard and go from there.

Using this approach, I was able to easily add and remove servers from the environment. I could run about 4 sessions comfortably on the single PC that I had. When I started studying for the each exam, I'd basically start with a fresh environment so that there wasn't anyting still configured from the old environment that I had forgotten about.

You'll find that over the process of the MCSE, you'll create a lot of fresh forests and domains!!

As far as the physical network is concerned, I just used my ADSL router which contains a 4 port switch. Any network hardware you have will be fine (hub or switch). You won't need a hardware router if you don't have one as the only routing that you'll be doing will be done via RRAS.

Hope this helps!

http://www.benchristian.com

 

[LWComputingMVP]

I would recommend the virtual PC route as well, though I would suggest, if you want to run more than one or two Virtual Machines (VMs) that you get more than 1 GB of RAM. 2-3 GB would be a nice amount and a dual core CPU as well. But, that said, I've run as many as TWO VMs (running Windows) at the same time on a system with a 1.9 GHz P4 and 768 MB of RAM (my laptop).

As for your software (I know you're not necessarily asking this), but I STRONGLY recommend you get a subscription to Microsoft TechNet Plus - $350 for a year subscription (downloads only), includes licenses for non-production, no-time-limited versions of most Microsoft server products, including Small Business Server Standard and Premium, XP, Vista (betas right now), Exchange, SQL 2005, BizTalk, Office Pro, ISA Server, and dozens of other programs and utilities. Considering how much any ONE of these products would cost, $350 is a FANTASTIC price - also, you get TWO free calls to Microsoft support (good for 1 year) - each call is typically $245 - so you basically buy 2 support calls - at a big discount - and get all that software for evaluation and learning for FREE. (from one point of view).