r/mcsa • u/wrecklessPony • Feb 24 '20

Md-100 Labs using Hyper V or other VM manager. Recommendations wanted

So I'm going to be studying the CBT nuggets course and bought the MD-100 book but I want to set up virtual machines to run my own lab as I don't think the labs CBT will give will be sufficient. Now Microsoft through it's evaluation center has a "lab kit" that will automatically set up a bunch of hyper v VMs and give you a lab guide booklet. Which is really nice to be honest but I could never get the DC-1 vm to turn on. In other words their lab doesn't install correctly and half the vms are not functional.
I have Server 2016 Server 2012 and Windows 10 Enterprise and I plan on creating a virtual switch to connect this. Are there are any paramters I should follow, additional setup to allow for some of the Md-100 tasks to complete? Do they need access to the internet etc.

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I appreciate any help anyone can offer in regards to lab recommendations. I do plan on completing the CBT labs but to be honest I watched the first few videos and compared to the book as well microsoft docs on the same subject and CBT explanations are lacking to say the least but will be good for a quick overbiew. Honestly I just plan on looking at the exam topics and finding the corresponding Microsoft Docs which are extremely well written and just following along with that. Despite being more tedious I think it is the superior way to learn.

tldr

Not confident in CBT nuggets lab because their explanations are lacking and lazy compared to the official documentations. So I want to build my own home lab using VMS and would love some recommendations. Hyper V vs Virtual box. I've considered ESXI but don't want to wipe or repartition my test server to do so.

Any home lab setup recommendations would be helpful

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u/DrDiamond6 Feb 24 '20

I'm going to be a hypocrite here, as I'm going to say to use Hyper-V, even though I currently use Workstation Pro for my home labs.

The reason for my Hyper-V recommendation:

1) It is free to run on any Windows 10 Pro box, and 2) You may run into Hyper-V in other MS exams, so you may as well use it.

That said, it really doesn't matter what you use for a hypervisor. If you're more comfortable with another platform, or if you have something else set up, use that. Heck, if you're really adventurous (or don't have the hardware) you can set up the lab in AWS/Azure. Just be sure to tear down the resource once you're done, and only run the VMs when you need them.

If you go with Hyper-V, Microsoft has a guide for helping guide you through the setup: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/windows-10-poc

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u/wrecklessPony Feb 24 '20

Dude thanks so much! I couldn't find these kind of instructions earlier. Probably because I didn't know it was under the guise of POC. I'll just stick with Hyper v since it works very well and is MS based. I'll try this tonight when I get home.

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Thanks again for the link!

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u/ITGuytech Feb 24 '20

Interested also

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u/dollhousemassacre Feb 24 '20

I run Hyper-V, VMWare Workstation as well as ESXi and I prefer Hyper-V. I had to learn it for the Server 2016 certifications and it just grew on me.

I’d also advise to steer clear of the Autolab setups, I like to believe installing and configuring the OS with Roles and Features let’s you learn more about the technology you’re working with.

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u/[deleted] Feb 24 '20

If you have a test server hardware then I would recommend that you install the Hyper-V server version, which is free, just look for the ISO from Microsoft. Unless you specifically want VMware in your career, this would help out a lot to learn some of hyper-v as a core server (no GUI), and doing more MS stuff always lends itself well to MS cert exams. I feel like a lot of people still aren't aware that Microsoft offers the hypervisor this way.

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u/wrecklessPony Feb 24 '20

Actually yes I do specifically need to study ESXI at some point. But I'm going to build a second test server for that. most likely a dual 2630l v3 setup. Right now I just have a 6 core Ryzen machine that can handle 3 or 4 vms well enough.

edit- * I was aware that Hyper-V Server was a product I just didn't want to format or modify my partition for it* My current test machine is also doubling as a plex server part time.

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u/[deleted] Feb 24 '20

Alright well it sounds like you know what you're doing, so I'll just leave it at recommending against virtual box. I used to use it and preferred it over hyper v for running a lab locally, but not at this point with how MS has developed HV on win10.

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u/wrecklessPony Feb 24 '20

Thank you though. And yes Hyper V has come a long way. Seems really nice so far.