Often you need a LAN environment to practice your Microsoft/Linux server or Networking concepts, setting up a physical LAN environment is not practical for learning in most cases.
Thanks to Virtualization.
I am going to show you how to configure a Virtual LAN consisting of a Windows Server 2003 and three Windows 2000 Clients in VMWare, I am good at VMWare, I find it extremely reliable especially in case of Network configuration, I had problems with the same in VirtualBox.