for a sandbox, My labs exist in either VirtualBox or VMWare; i have both installed on my beefy laptop. VirtualBox even has a portable edition, so you can keep them on an external SSD, and plug them into a usb port at home/work/etc.
so for example, you start with installing Virtual Box portable[/url], and then
you can get the evaluation edition of Windows 2012 operating system or a desktop version like Windows 10 and the free copy of SQL2014 developer edition[/url].,
you create a new "Machine" in Virtualbox with the windows settings that match your operating system,install the operating system, and then install SQL.
with that done, you can take several snapshots over the next weeks and months to create save points that you can roll back to if you mess up your sandbox to the point you feel you need to step back and start over.
even better, you can copy an entire machine as a new sandbox over and over again.
I'd call it about two to four hours of prep for a first timer who never used virtual box, including downloads of big files from microsoft, and the time to install the OS and SQL.
Now, with some decent experienced using Virtualbox or VMware, i can create a new from scratch in the time it takes to press "next" buttons ten times, or clone a machine i built in seconds.
Lowell
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