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Lab setup

I am studying for my MCSA and VMware certificates. I want to setup a lab that will allow me to practice for them. What would you recommend? Windows Server 2012 - DC, DNS, DHCP a few windows machines.  Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you in advance.
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Mal Osborne
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Windows server 2012 requires very little to boot and be useable. Officially, half a Gb of RAM and 32Gb HDD space is the minimum, however that would be a real pain to use.  A 5 year old desktop with 4Gb RAM and 200Gb of HDD space is more than enough for training. Probably easy enough to set up a simple lab for a few hundred $$s, using junk. I would go for several machines,

Microsoft will let you run 2012 as a "trial", with full functionality.
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Thank you Malmensa, I am purchasing a FS12-NV7 2U Rackmount server Dual AMD Quadcore with 64GB RAM for around £185 which will be more than adequate.

Regarding Server roles what would you setup on a test lab or would it just be install and test?
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Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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Andrew - Just the information I require. I will have a look at Autolab.

Thanks mate
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Mal Osborne
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Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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You then have a choice, of using your server with either

1. A Windows OS with VMware Player or VMware Workstation and AutoLab.

2. Windows 2012 Hyper-V (but this will not allow the use of VMware vSphere).

3. VMware vSphere (ESXi) on the Bare Metal and AutoLab, which can use Windows 2012 and Hyper-V