In between I have been looking around, including asking a MCT, but so far I have not succeeded in finding the answer... As there are quite a few more people that have done the 70-462 exam here that also used the TK, there must be enough knowledge here to get me started and help me set up the environment myself...

The training kit gives no more info than this on the Hyper-V environment:

System Requirements

The following are the minimum system requirements your computer needs to meet to

complete the practice exercises in this book and to run the companion CD. To minimize the

time and expense of configuring physical computers for this training kit, it’s recommended

that you use Hyper-V, which is a feature of Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2,

Windows Server 2012, and certain editions of Windows 8. You can use other virtualization

software instead, but the instructions are written assuming that you are using a solution that

supports 64-bit operating systems hosted as virtual machines.

Hardware Requirements

This section presents the hardware requirements for Hyper-V, the hardware requirements if

you are not using virtualization software, and the software requirements.

Virtualization Hardware Requirements

If you choose to use virtualization software, you need only one physical computer to perform

the exercises in this book. That physical host computer must meet the following minimum

hardware requirements:

¦¦ x64-based processor that includes both hardware-assisted virtualization (AMD-V or

Intel VT) and hardware data execution protection. (On AMD systems, the data execution

protection feature is called the No Execute or NX bit. On Intel systems, this feature

is called the Execute Disable or XD bit.) These features must also be enabled in the

BIOS. (Note: You can run Windows Virtual PC without Intel-VT or AMD-V.)

¦¦ 8.0 GB of RAM.

¦¦ 80 GB of available hard disk space if you are using differencing virtual hard disks.

¦¦ DVD-ROM drive.

¦¦ Internet connectivity.

Physical Hardware Requirements

If you choose to use physical computers instead of virtualization software, use the following

list to meet the minimum hardware requirements of the practice exercises in this book:

¦¦ Six personal computers, each with a 1.4-GHz, 64-bit processor, minimum 2 GB of RAM,

50 GB hard disk drive, network card, video card, and DVD-ROM drive.

¦¦ All six computers must be connected to the same network.

Practice Setup Instructions

This section contains abbreviated instructions for setting up the domain controller (DC),

SQL-A, SQL-B, SQL-C, SQL-D, and SQL-Core computers used in the practice exercises in all

chapters of this training kit. To perform these exercises, first install Windows Server 2008 R2

Enterprise edition with Service Pack 1 using the default configuration, setting the administrator

password to Pa$$w0rd. For server SQL-Core, install Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise

Edition with Service Pack 1 in the default server core configuration, setting the administrator

password to Pa$$w0rd.

After that the book just talks about the individual machines after the environment has been set up...

I do have a few questions like these:

- the Hyper-V environment of the six servers only needs 80GB of HD space. When using 6 physical PC's those need 50GB each... How come the difference?

- any idea of the specs that are needed per virtual machine on memory and diskspace? The TK says nothing about this...

- I have not Googled this one yet (will do) but does anyone know of some more instructions online in setting such an environment up without having to become a Hyper-V and Windows Server expert?

To be honest, I think MS could have given quite some more info in the TK for setting up the environment. To me it seems a little bit short sighted to assume that everyone knows his way around in Hyper-V and Windows Server...

Cheers,

Erik