Mastering: System Center Data Protection Manager 2007

Appendix B. Setting Up a Lab Environment

We have the technology.

—Oscar Goldman, The Six Million Dollar Man

Over the course of the book, you may have become tired of our constant badgering about having a proper lab. Just so you know, we're not stopping now. If you're reading this appendix, we hope that you've caved in and are looking into setting up a lab as you work your way through the rest of the book.

Our objective in this appendix is three-fold:

• To outline what you'll need to address in your lab and help you determine the most simple and cost-effective configuration you'd need in your test lab

• To show you how to set up a simple environment, based as much as possible on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 (MSVS)—or, if you absolutely have to, Microsoft Virtual PC (VPC)

• To put together an environment that you can use to familiarize yourself with DPM 2007

We're going to make some simplifying assumptions along the way, such as that you're using a single network instead of performing DPM operations over a second network. Feel free to expand on our plans here.

Hardware and Software Requirements

One of the big questions you need to answer is whether or not you're going to run your lab all on physical hardware or use a virtual machine (VM) architecture. VMs have a lot of advantages and disadvantages, but they work well for the purposes of this configuration. We're not trying to build a lab that you can do full performance testing in, after all; we're just trying to give you an environment ...