I am in the process of learning Microsoft Windows Server 2012. I’m a hands on learner for the most part and working with a lab environment always speeds up my learning exponentially. I have been looking for the most practical Lab options. I’m looking for flexibility, I want to be able to practice in an isolated environment at home and at work.

I am amazed at the amount of Lab options that are available these days. Way back when I was pursuing Microsoft Certified System Engineer certification on Windows 2000 my lab consisted of two broken down computers. I recall that these systems even though they were less than stellar, ran Windows 2000 with Active Directory very well. These systems were AMD K6-2 (remember those?) with 64 MB of memory.

One of the options in Windows 7 which excited me was running your OS in a VHD file and this is the first time I am trying this.

Basically you’ll configure the Windows 2012 evaluation VHD and boot into it and configure Hyper-V. You can then configure other lab Clients in Hyper-V as required.

  1. Download Windows Server 2012 DataCenter Evaluation VHD (Not the ISO)
  2. Extract VHD from downloaded file
  3. Attached VHD in Disk Manager
  4. Add Drive Letter of VHD to boot manager

![](http://gravyflex.wordpress.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wpgallery/img/t.gif “gallery ids=“236,238,237,239,235"”)