Setting up a home lab using VMWare Workstation 14 Pro, Datastore using SATA Disk

[vminfra]

Hello,

I have been trying to build a VMWare Home lab on an Intel i7 processor, 1 TB hard disk and 4GB memory.  Here is the scenario, I would like to Linux VM using this Hypervisor.

1. Created a VM to ESXi 6.5 and installed on the Workstation. The ESXi is loaded

2. I am connecting using the Browser to this ESXi here is the connection using the browser

3. I am trying to create a Linux VM. I select the storage 'Assistense'

4. I am getting this error when trying to do this. What is the best method to build a home lab

[RAJ_RAJ]

What is the error you are getting ?

[JLogan2016]

I will tell you how I've done my lab; it may not all work but you may find some things that give you ideas. Note that I am fortunate enough to live near a big university that sells off its old network gear on the cheap, so this setup is not as expensive as it may sound:

• I have two Dell R710 servers, each with dual quad-cores (2.53GHz), 72GB RAM and 6TB of disk
• On each host I loaded Server 2016 (although you could get by with Windows 10) and Workstation 12.5.8. I am purposely using the older version, as I have run into some issues with v. 14
• On each host I load three ESXi hosts, and one virtual NAS device. I am using Openfiler
• I present the LUNs (detailed very simply and easily in the Openfiler doc) to all of the ESX hosts, and then load my VCSA.
• The only issue I am working through at the moment is routing between the two physical hosts; I would like to use something other than Bridged but have yet to find the right setup.

While this setup is for two physical hosts, you could just as easily to it for one. The use of Openfiler for the storage makes it much easier to manage from within vSphere.