I wasn't particularly after the software.
I was more interested in the learning experience you were offering. Thanks for the link though, every little bit helps!
Oh I see. The only thing I can think is remote class sessions lol. I can tell you though the more you do on your own, the more errors you make, you will learn from all mistakes; as we know mistake is a word with a wide range of meaning in IT. Basically if you say you want to do IT or just a particular area of IT you must be willing to learn more about other areas of IT. If you can afford a physical (not virtual) machine that is somewhat new, yet old enough to be cheap I suggest getting one. I would then go to as many horrible malware sites, and download applications.
BUT: do not do that on your network, you may want to subnet your home network to separate it from your main home network. But if you don't have lots of devices on your home network then just do it and beware of network spoofers which can alter the way your internet application(s) work. DDOS attacks are also something to watch out for. Pretty much if you suspect an issue too advanced for you just do a hard reset of your networking equipment. Also change your IP address.
The reason I say you want a physical machine is because hardware is also a major part of basic IT. There are things out there that can mess up your hardware. I used Windows Loader, which you should never do because it is not legal to use, but me a couple years ago wasn't so worried. I activated Windows and when I restarted my machine I could not boot. It said SLIC 2.0 missing or something. I ended up having to re-create the MBR for the bootloader and after I did that Windows was still not activated HAHA.
Virtual machines though are good to test malware on and also test applications you may not trust to put on your main OS. Plus if a VM is going bad because of faulty programs you can just delete the VHD and create a new one in minutes.
Trial and error is the best preparation for real world scenarios:
If you've run in to a major issue because you did something without thinking or knowing the consequences I guarantee if you really want to pursue a career in IT you will learn how to fix it because you are not about to spend $150-$300 to get it fixed lol. In fact that was the ONLY reason I was driven to be in IT for a long time. Then I realized how fun it is. But basically if you are not prepared to spend hours a day just tweaking with computers, take some sort of college class , or pursue a certificate in a specific field then just spend that $150-$300
But yes I'm wrapping this up:
Basically just get that dummy machine, download sardu, and fire away. Also get a few cheap hard drives to practice setting up RAID. There are different types of RAID just so you know.
Multiple hard drives working together: All about RAID setups | PCWorld
I hope this helps!
