As you can see from the three pictures below I had a rather complex  home computer lab with plenty of hardware and software to duplicate and practice any of the labs presented in the Microsoft classes. When I was a Microsoft Trainer, previous students usually asked me... "Do I really need  an elaborate home computer lab setup to study for my Microsoft certifications?".... the definitive answer back then was maybe... now the answer is a definitive NO, thanks to VIRTUALIZATION!

You can study for IT certifications with a single high-end system, assuming it has ample horsepower and memory. A serous student can be more efficient with the duplication of lab assignments with maybe two systems that meet the hardware requirements of running virtualization software from Microsoft or VMware. With hardware costs so low these days it doesn't take much to build a couple of systems for study purposes, check out eBay for some really low system prices.

My original home computer lab was a small scale Client/Server based network of over ten systems including, 4 servers, 5 desktops and 2 laptops using Windows NT 4.0 Server, Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Advanced Server in  both mix and native mode network configurations. Two domains on two subnets are separated by a Windows 2000 multi-Nic Server with RRAS configured as a software router. The lab simulation subnet is in Windows 2000 Native Mode running Active Directory, DFS and Dynamic DNS (DDNS). The subnet is constantly changing to mirror the labs found in the courses. 

The production subnet was in mix mode with a Windows 2000 Server as the main DC, IIS 5.0 Web / FTP Server and an NT 4.0 Server configured as a BDC. On the NT system I was running Exchange 5.5 E-Mail server and SQL 7.0. A Windows 2000 Server was configured as a member server and was used for file / print services as well as running all backups via a 40 GIG internal DAT drive with Seagate Backup Exec Ver 8.5. All network cards were 100Mb and connected via CAT5 twisted pair cable terminating to a D-Link DHS 16 port 10/100 switch in tandem with a LinkSys 10/100 5 port switch right on my desk. One server was dedicated to beta software and two other systems outside of the network were used with Windows 98 2nd Edition as a gaming system (when I had any time...) and the last system was a low end Acer Pentium that ran Corel Linux, for those non-Microsoft moments.

Internet connectivity was shared to all systems via a single high speed xDSL modem connected to the Windows 2000 Server third network card and using RRAS as the NAT/LAN/WAN router, a dial-up line for Internet access was configured as a backup and was configured via RRAS and Dial on Demand routing. The Domain Controller had a public IP address on the WAN side NIC and private IP address for the LAN side NIC in the 192.168.X.X range. All internal systems in the production subnet had static assigned private IP's and systems on the test subnet were dynamically assigned via DHCP. To keep those nasty hackers out of my network, I had deployed several techniques including a software firewall, Microsoft's own ISA Server. Network protection was adequate since the network was only attacked once.

These days in Boca Raton, the home lab is quite small in size, yet many times the muscle all packed in a slim black and silver box. My current lab environment runs on a single Dell PowedEdge 2950 with quad 2.0 GHz processors, 24 gigs of memory, 2TB of shared storage on a ReadyNAS NV+ and 500GB of  mirrored local storage running on Windows 2008 Server Enterprise and VMware Workstation version. 6.5

An un-racked, yet fully functioning Dell PowedEdge SC1425 server can also be used as a stiff, yet very warm and friendly bed for your favorite kitty cat.... here kitty, kitty!

Click on any picture below for a larger view...