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Hi all,

I’m looking to get a more hands on feel for some training I will be starting soon. I’ve done plenty of online virtual labs with Boson or AWS and even the Microsoft Virtual Academy. However, I always feel like i’m just reading a cookbook and following along instead of really absorbing what i’m doing.

I have a Surface Pro 4, although it has plenty of power for my day to day tasks, it doesn’t have enough memory to run more than two VMs or so at a time.

Does anyone have any recommendations on home lab equipment or does anyone know if I could setup a home lab via Azure or AWS in the cloud for a reasonable price? Would it be worth it for me to pickup a used server and mount it somewhere in my house so I could remote access the machine without having to dedicate a whole room to my setup.

Essentially i’m looking to get my MCSA Server 2016 and my Network +.

If anyone has any advice on what they’ve done or setup, it would be great if you could point me in the right direction.

9 Spice ups
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I would recommend the Udemy course on AWS certified solutions architect associate. You can run all your instances in AWS, mostly for free during this course. Maybe a few bucks here and there if you do the load balancer labs.

Even if you are not interested in AWS certs, their free tier offerings are great for training.

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You don’t actually need a server to run Windows server. I ran it on an older workstation, one with a Core 2 Duo and 8 GB of memory when I was checking out variuos version of Windows server. If you are going to be loading VM’s you can just get a used workstation from www.newegg.com like this;

It is an HP desktop with a core i5 and 16 GB of memory. For a home lab this will work very well. If you want to get a used server there are many places like www.servermonkey.com that you can get used equipment from without braking the bank. I feel that if you re just running a home lab for training and not trying to duplicate a work installation then a desktop computer is a great alternative for learning on.

As for network equipment, well that depends on what brands you want to learn on. You can pick up used Cisco equipment online again from www.servermonkey.com or on Amazon. You don’t have to have the latest greatest for networking equipment to be able to train on it for the most part. I have a Cisco 2900 and 3510? that didn’t brake the bank for me and though they are older I can still get useful experience on them.

Whatever you want to use for networking equipment you can pickup something used online for far less.

I have the following at my home lab for training and I was able to get them for free due to age or for very little.

Cisco 2900

Cisco 3510

SonicWALL TZ 100

HP Procurve Switch

MikroTik

Cisco Small Business Switch

Ubiquiti WAP Pro

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Thanks for the input so far guys! I already started the AWS Solutions Architect class on Udemy and it’s going well. I just need to start forcing myself to study nightly.

As far as equipment, I know I don’t “need” a server. I just would like to run multiple machines at once without having it turn on/off each machine each time. Last time I set up a 2016 environment in VMware I was killing my pc with only 2-3 VM running at the same time. It was crawling, each VM had 1.5 GB of Ram so it was taking up roughly 5GB out of the 8GB that my surface has. I was storing these VMs on a portable SSD that I enclosed in a USB 3.0 case so I wouldn’t blow up my C drive.

Am I doing something wrong? Should the memory be lower on these VMs? That’s why I thought maybe a refurb server would be a better option and then I could just remote into the test network and play around that way.

Essentially this is what i’m looking for:

Replicate work setup minus the network equipment.

  • 1 DC
  • Few servers - file server, DNS, DHCP
  • Maybe two client machines Win 7 and Win 10 to have both environments.

Just enough to cover everything that would be on the MSCA

Here is the server I was considering: http://pcserverandparts.com/hp-proliant-dl360-g7-virtualization-8-core-server-32gb-4x146gb-10k-p-410i-ilo3/

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Before I got my servers I was running 3-4 VMs on my windows 10 pro i7 using hyper-v and never ran into any issues you can essentially create a virtual network as well

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You can setup remote access through third party software such as Team Viewer or Zoho. Since it is for yourself these programs are free. You could also get your lab network up and running and setup a VPN server either with VPN capability though a network appliance or through the host OS on your server. As far a the server question goes, you do not need fast memory so much as you just need enough, again this is a lab environment. DDR2 or DDR3 will work just fine for learning. Almost all purpose build servers only take ECC memory which does cost more then desktop RAM. Basicly unless you want to try out HP ILO function or have a dual CPU’s, redundant power supplies, or builtin hot swap hard drives a desktop computer with 12 GB, 16 GB, or more of memory will work very well for a test server. Also production grade servers of the older verity are loud.

The setup you are looking at, DC, DNS, DHCP, file server, are not resource intense at all. Please don’t get me wrong, if you want to get a real server machine yes by all means! Server Monkey would be a great place to start. Below are a few links for inexpensive servers that may fit your bill.

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I think you can run a decent AD (server + 2/3 workstations) environment with an i5/16 GB, also setup a consumer grade NAS unit for storing your VM’s and it can also work as a file server.

Also this workstation don’t use it for personal use. leave it as only a testing PC.

For networking, if you have access to Cisco network academy, you can download Packet Tracer (A network simulation program) as it support all the features you might need for Network+ and CCNA, if you want to use a physical environment just buy a couple (at least 3) L3 Switches and just play with them (this might be expensive) i think that you need to learn first how to setup L2/L3 devices using CLI before jumping to a GUI management. CLI will be harder to tackle at the beginning but it will help you to understand what is happening in the background better than the GUI

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If you want to get a home lab for both MCSA and Network+ then you might want to look at some recertified servers and network equipment.

For servers, to run VMs on, you might want to look at a workstation if you can’t afford a full server … you can find recertified servers at either Newegg or Tigerdirect

If you are going for Network+ then best to stick to the widest available network vendor for some network gear to learn and practice on, stick with Cisco switches and routers to set up a home lab that you can also branch out and go for a CCENT/CCNA later on. I got a lot of my network gear at home from older units they were throwing out at work, or on places like Craigslist, before I updated to newer Cisco Meraki devices (you can earn a free MX, MS and MR from the Meraki webinars ).

@Cisco @Cisco_Meraki_1