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Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 1: The Story

November 30, 2011 boerlowie Go to comments Leave a comment Recent Posts
How to Shrink a Thin VMDK on ESXi 5.0
In my search of the ‘ultimate affordable’ Lab setup for VMware VCAP/VCP/… exams, i went
vSphere 5.1 Release Date
through a lot of possible set ups.
leaked? (Updated)
In the end, i started to build a powerful desktop pc in which i intend to virtualize my vSphere Enable VASA on HP P4000 Lefthand SAN
environment. The reasons that made me chose a desktop PC running Windows 7 with VMware with vSphere 5
Workstation 8 to do this:
Bug in HP Agents 8.70 causes HP DL580 G7
– Everybody has a pc. So why not buy a lightning fast pc which makes your daily application running ESX to reboot on PSU
work at light speed (email/surfing/office tasks) and gives you a perfect lab! failure [SOLVED]
Install vSphere in VMware Workstation
– While i enjoy playing around with servers, i don’t like them at home… they are loud, they using EFI instead of a BIOS
generate heat similar to a woodstove, they consume electricity like hell and they are always in
Starting vSphere Client in other locales
the way of things… Plus you have to interconnect them using 5000 miles of cable. Bottom
line: me not like! Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part
12: Finalizing the Lab
– Every VMware Admin knows the benefits of virtualization… So why not virtualize your lab? Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part
It makes it very flexible (play with # NICs, snapshots, clones, …). 11: vMotion & Fault Tolerance
– Since quite some people are already VCP, you can finally put some good use to that VMware Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part
Workstation license you got 10: Storage
Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part
– It’s very easy to suspend all your work (suspend all the VMs aka your whole vSphere
9: ESXi
environment), shutdown your pc, go to sleep/work/kids/fun and continue the day after. No
electricity wasted, no annoying noises, …
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– Since a lot of vSphere features originally were introduced in VMware Workstation, it’s always
Hardware
nice to play around with it.
Network
– With the coming of VMware Workstation 8, you can finally expose VT-x to the VMs, making it
PowerCLI
possible to run x86 & x64 VMs on your virtual vSphere environment. This includes VDR,
vShield, … PowerShell
Storage
– Finally, it’s cheaper that a hardware setup (maybe not as powerful in terms of performance
Ultimate vSphere Lab
but it will only host a Lab environment so no big deal for me).
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VMware
So that are my reasons to go for a virtual Lab setup. On the next post, I’ll discuss the
hardware you need for this desktop pc…
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Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 1: The Story
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Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 2: The Hardware
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Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 3: VMware Workstation 8 Themes

Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 4: Base Template WordPress Blog
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Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 5: Prepare the Template

Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 6: Domain Controller

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Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 7: SQL Server September 2012
July 2012
Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 8: vCenter
February 2012
Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 9: ESXi
January 2012
Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 10: Storage December 2011

Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 11: vMotion & Fault Tolerance November 2011
September 2011
Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 12: Finalizing the Lab
August 2011
July 2011
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Leave a comment Trackback Trackbacks (23) Comments (36)

Pasti
December 1, 2011 at 10:10 Reply
I can’t wait to see your configuration

Tom
Power
January 3, 2012 at 19:51 Reply
Thanks for the info. Creating a test environment within the next 3 weeks.
Cheers.
Tom

julietech
February 20, 2012 at 00:14 Reply
Fantastic !
great of you to make such a detailed blog,
I am sure it will help many,and is certainly apreciated,

J.tech

Dhaval P.
June 6, 2012 at 16:06 Reply
Great job! Thank you for sharing this information. I ran through your tutorial
twice to see how you were downloading Windows operating systems. I think you
are running in eval mode, which I want to do as well to save money for my lab
but I am not sure how annoying the reconfigurations would be with dc, vcenter
and other servers expiring with time limits. I can stack or ladder expiration
dates/time limits, so I have time to reconfigure another server. I want to know if
your experience with the lab configured now, would you go back and sign up for
MS Technet or have a better way? Would it make this easier with Technet
subscription? I don’t want to waste time after coming home from work to rebuild
stuff, where I could easily be doing labs and studying for VCP.

Thanks,

Dhaval

June 7, 2012 at 08:15 Reply

A Technet subscription would be the cheapest ‘legal’ solution.
Windows will expire after 180 days which is quite long. boerlowie
For VMware, you can use trial licenses (ask your partner), but
they will always expire after several months…

Roland
Schmid
July 10, 2012 at 17:55 Reply
Great Lab!
I am trying to do the lab at home, but I have no windows.
But I have vmware fusion, would this work instead of vmware workstation ?

Thanks,

Roland

Steve
Simoes
September 7, 2012 at 17:20 Reply
I commend you for taking the time to out this information together. I have an
isolated lab on an extra server that is allowing me to study for the VCP and plan
my upgrade from 4 to 5. Thanks!

Brian C.
December 14, 2012 at 15:31 Reply
Hi. Just wanted to say that I thought this was a solid lab and I’ve implemented it
twice. I teach VMware authorized classes and use your lab setup to demo stuff in
my classes. I was wondering if you were planning on updating the lab for 5.1?
Thanks again for a great Lab setup and tutorial….which I also pass on to my
students.

December 14, 2012 at 21:13 Reply

I know,

i have to find some time to update it to the newest version of all boerlowie
things… (WS9, vSphere 5.1, Win2012, …). I’ll try to get on it but
can’t promise anything as it’s quite busy lately

MrMoi
December 16, 2012 at 23:35 Reply
Hoi hoi,

Leuke blog heb je! Ik ben al een tijdje opzoek naar de perfecte test lab voor mijn
vm’s, had eerst een esxi draaien maar vond deze beetje beperkt(nic’s) kan je me
helpen met een perfecte stille zuinige workstation/server samzn stellen?

Alvast bedankt..

December 17, 2012 at 17:06 Reply

Waar ik op gelet heb:
– Voldoende memory. Tegenwoordig is 32 GB al betaalbaar boerlowie
– SSD (snelheid) van minimaal 80 GB

Qua CPU ben ik persoonlijk voor Intel. Moederbord heb ik een

‘basis’ ASUS bordje genomen met standaard functionaliteiten.

Neem een goeie case (liefst met geluidsisolatie in) met grote
Fans in. Hoe groter de diameter van je Fans, hoe trager deze
zullen draaien en hoe minder lawaai ze maken. Wanneer ik m’n
PC opzet, hoor je deze eigenlijk amper tijdens normaal gebruik.

Veel succes!

December 17, 2012 at 19:33

thanks for the reply

ik beschik al over een elite 8300 SFF verder ging ik kijken MrMoi
voor een HP miicroserver N40L of de opvolgder N54L

zou deze uitbreiden met het volgende:

* 32GB RAM
* Samsung 830 128GB
* 2 schijven van 1TB (7200 of 5400, had gehoord dat de
5400 zuiniger is dan de 7200?

ben aan het twijfelen om de microserver aan te schaffen

of verder gaan met de SFF of de componenten inbouwen
in een andere case?

MrMoi
December 17, 2012 at 19:45 Reply

MrMoi :
thanks for the reply
ik beschik al over een elite 8300 SFF (Compaq Elite 8300 AiO Intel Core
i5-3470 500GB HDD 7200 SATA) verder ging ik kijken voor een HP
miicroserver N40L of de opvolgder N54L
zou deze uitbreiden met het volgende:
* 32GB RAM
* Samsung 830 128GB
* 2 schijven van 1TB (7200 of 5400, had gehoord dat de 5400 zuiniger
is dan de 7200?
ben aan het twijfelen om de microserver aan te schaffen of verder gaan
met de SFF of de componenten inbouwen in een andere case?

magic
mesh
December 19, 2012 at 19:12 Reply
Heya i’m for the primary time here. I came across this board and I find It truly
useful & it helped me out a lot. I am hoping to give one thing back and help
others like you aided me.

Giridhar
December 31, 2012 at 16:01 Reply
Thank You for the detaiedl procedure to build the home lab setup. I followed and
built the same way and I learnt a lot going through this process. Keep it up the
good work.

Ganesh
January 31, 2013 at 16:13 Reply
Awesome step by step instruction, way to go bro, more varieties welcome if you
can and find some time, Thanks Again !!!

February 7, 2013 at 20:15 Reply

I plan on creating a new Lab as soon as 5.1 is supported on
Server 2012! Keep an eye on the blog boerlowie

September 16, 2013 at 15:19

Hi,
Have you now created a new lab for 5.1 with win server Shayn
2012?

September 25, 2013 at 12:15

No not yet… i was about to begin, but with 2012 R2
coming out and 5.5 i decided to wait a tad longer and boerlowie
build one with those versions… hang on tight

Wayne B
February 4, 2013 at 22:39 Reply
Can anyone tell me if they know of a preconfigured Dell of HP desktop systems
that will have all the hardware requirements? I prefer if possible to just buy the
machine then add another HDD if needed or extra RAM.

February 4, 2013 at 22:43 Reply

I found this machine online:HP 8300 W7P-64 i7 2600 3.4GHz
500GB SATA 4GB DDR3 1333
Wayne B

February 7, 2013 at 20:11

The machine itself looks fine! Bump the memory to 16 GB
and throw in a SSD drive and you lab will fly like a rocket boerlowie

John A
February 6, 2013 at 09:50 Reply
I build using a DC – the other 2008 r2 had Vcentre and SQL express – also put
on 192.168.*.* network and set gate ways as router – you can them remote to
vcentre and sql or run remote – . Also to make it easier I snapshottted the 1st
vm build – just before DC promo then cloned it as a termplate then returned to
the snapshot before runnig dc promo also let DNS install along with dcpromo this
ironed used some issues with sids and dns resolution not working.

I would of liked to of used full blown SQL – but after reading how Single sign on
is so difficult to setup and get working correctly – I skipped this part.

I may migrate to full blown sql later does anyone know the link for sql download
and whatthe eval lenght is on this.

John

Christian
February 28, 2013 at 16:05 Reply
Would a machine with an AMD FX8 series work just as well as an Intel processor?
According to AMDs website, these processors support Virtualization technology.
I’m just trying to be budget conscious.

uclord
March 13, 2013 at 14:33 Reply
Reblogged this on UC Lord and commented:
Great Lab

Craig
Summers
March 27, 2013 at 17:37 Reply
Would this kind of environment work ok on a laptop:
Win8, 6GB RAM, i5 Dual core intel processor, 1GB dedicated graphics card

April 14, 2013 at 19:44 Reply

It should run, but you won’t be able to run any VMs on your
ESXi hosts in that config… You need more memory and to work boerlowie
comfortably an SSD…

Luis
April 11, 2013 at 15:14 Reply
Great lab!!! Especially for someone like me who is totally new to VMware. One
question I do have is, how do the VMs on the “VM Network” communicate with
the Servers on the “Management Network” as I do not see any routing……

April 14, 2013 at 19:24 Reply

Well they don’t

The VMs itself can communicate with other VMs on the cluster, boerlowie
but not with the ‘Infrastructure’. But that’s just a way of setting
it up in the lab, you can easily change the VMnet of the
underlying vmnics in VMware Workstation to match the
vCenter/AD/… network.

oscarjrodriguez@live.com
April 29, 2013 at 15:59 Reply
Thank you very much for this post. I’ve bulit this home lab with varying
hardware and updated software. I have since passed my VCP510, and if I can
thank you in any way please let me know.

oscarjrodriguez@live.com
April 29, 2013 at 16:10 Reply
I am not sure if you wanted my Labsetup, but here it is :

Software :

VMware workstation 9
Windows server 2008 R2/2012
SQL Datat center 2008

Hardware:
Corei 7 3770k
256 SSD
1 TB HDD
32 GB RAM
I believe that is all that is important

November 27, 2013 at 00:28 Reply

Hi oscarjrodrig,
Can i ask…did you build Win 2008 R2/2012, SQL 2008, VMware
Jason
Workstation 9 ALL on 1 machine ?

What about ESXi ?

James
April 30, 2013 at 19:49 Reply
Hi – one of my VM’s (the vCenter VM) has stopped working for some reason.
Even when I revert back to a snapshot it doesnt find a network connection and
when entering control panel, it just hangs. I have no idea on how to repair this
other than to rebuild the VM however if I rebuild it and re-install vCenter and
then connect to it using the vSphere client, will all my modifications and work
that i’ve done on the 2 ESXi hosts I have be preserved?

Ayo Dada
July 21, 2013 at 17:42 Reply
Reblogged this on Ayo Dada's Blog and commented:
This is a Great Lab setup for home labs and testing

Jason
September 3, 2013 at 04:43 Reply
Hi boerlowie and everyone,

According to this site,

http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/whitepaperdetail.asp?
pageid=502&wpid=994

It says that a CPU with at least 2 cores is a bare minimum for running ESX1 host
and VMs but to ensure smooth running of many VMs and hosts, it suggests
getting a CPU with at least 6 or more. If so, can you recommend me one that is
capable of running at least 6 cores? Or a complete package with at least 12-
16Gb RAM.

I even read somewhere that 32Gb RAM is needed for some cases. Is this true ?
If so, what scenarios or lab require this much RAM ?

Thanks.

September 25, 2013 at 12:17 Reply

The requirements i suggest is only for a lab and certainly not for
production. Your VMs on the nested hosts will run fast enough to boerlowie
play around with, but not to actually do something ‘real’ like
mail/web/…

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