Need Help Scoping a Server to use for study (MCITP Ent Admin + SharePoint 2010)

Question

i need to study for mcitp, but i also need to study for sharepoint 2010

i have a poweredge 1850 with two single-core CPUs + two 73G drives - it kills me on electricity, so don't want to use it, and it won't do VT, but it could be one of three boxes for a lab that's cheap, but will cost a lot on electricity

i was thinking . . .

OPTION #1

Opteron 4170 HE (50 watt chip), 6-core, only two-bills ($200), but the board's are $250, so that's an $800 box, then get another box to dual-boot Win7/Hyper-V on the cheap...?

OPTION #2

Used Quad - but how many VM's that are really banging away could it run at same time? (Server 2008r2, SQL 2008r2, Search Server)

OPTION #3

Study from books and just get one box that can run two VM's at same time, even if slowly.

the last time i had and used a home lab was five years ago when i had a DC, SQL, Exchange and business app box, that's where i got my server skills was just banging on it for four years, but didn't read any books, so now i have to get certified and know the material, and just am not sure how much attention i should pay to the box i use versus the studying time and reading.

sorry it's a subjective question, and am obviously open to all sorts of abuse here, but hope you can tell me also how many VM's i can run at the same time given what they'll be doing (SQL and SharePoint FAST search server are resource hungry)

thanks!

Answer 1

Studying works differently for everyone, but these are my thoughts

Since you've got the experience already - I would spend the majority of my time comprehending the read material. For me this has always meant taking notes and re-reading anything I don't slightly understand. I should stress, the "taking notes" part is very important for me at least. The time I take to organize the notes in my mind allows me to understand the concepts better and retain the information. The re-reading takes discipline and is something I've had to practice. Unfortunately there's times when I read one chapter too many in a sitting and my mind is mush, and by the time I get to the end of the chapter I realize I didn't retain anything. When that happens, I bookmark the beginning of the chapter and step away to do something else before coming back. The worst thing you can do is to keep reading when you've identified that you're no longer paying attention.

To hold my interest in the content I try to always look for things I can take from the book and directly apply within my job easily. Ideas I want to apply at my job or that I'm having trouble understanding I model in a virtual environment (vmware, virtualbox, virtualpc). I usually can do this on my own laptop w/ just 4gb or RAM.

I guess my advice is to not get hung up on lab specs - focus on the information and use the lab environment when you don't feel like you have a good grasp on the information you've been taking in. You've got the hands on experience already, building every lab to completion might not hold a lot of value for you.

I hope that's helpful.

Answer 2

You focus on the wrong thing. CPU is not so relevant - memory is. Especially in a lab - things MAY take time occasionally.

I woudl go with:

• A MicroAtx board from ASUS.
• An Athlon X4 or X6
• 16gb RAM. THis is core - it pretty much determined how many vm's you can load. Point.
• Discs as you see fit. YOu can get a nice slide for putting 4x2.5" drives into 1x5.25" slotm

If you want to go higher, your budget will explode- then we talk of dual opteron with up to 64gb RAM. This can run a LOT. But a lot of VM's need fast discs, too.... you gend up paying like 7000 or so.

I have 2 machiens here using older Athlons (soon to be rplaced with a 1090 x6) and have the 16gb memory layout. Asus has a board that acutally supports ECC ram... comes in handy.

Put in a decent graphics card, and a way to easily erplace discs (2.5" swap trays) and the same machine can also serve are your workstation for games. Again, this is my plan (my personal computer gets an upgrade for this). I often travel to custoemrss for months at a time,so the ability to dual use ONE small computer for training and my own use is very valuable to me.

At the end, Memory wwill be a limiting factor, as will disc speed. CPU comes last - mostly because yoou have plenty for non-load scnearios (4-6 cores - heck, with 6 cores you can put in 6 vm's with 1 core each with full power each). Memory CAN be limiting. Discs will be then. A RAID 10 of decently fast discs is pretty much all you can ask for. It WILL be taxed when you do installes / Updates. I use BLack Scoprpio 320gb drives (4 in a Raid 10) for my VM area in the smaller servers... gives me 640 gb, but even there, during updates, with anAdaptec controller....they are on the limit. WIndows Service Packs take.... long.