Home Lab Recommendations - 2 x HP Proliant G6 DL360

[skim32]

Hello All,

I want to start studying for my VCP.  I received old HP Proliant G6 DL360 servers.  I believe these have the dual core XEONs in them and I want to upgrade them so that I can have a decent server for my home labs.  So I guess I have a couple of questions.

1.  Do I need a third server to properly setup a home lab? Or can I nest VMs to simulate multiple esxi hosts instead of having 3 hardware hosts.

2. I want replace my CPUs.  I was looking at getting 2 x Xeon E5645 or L5640 for each server. Would that suffice?  I guess power consumption is also a concern as after I am done with my studies, I may want to keep them running for my own server needs.  Nut not so much if it will hinder my studying.  Studying is higher priority.  Should I spend more and go for the x5690s?  Or is that overkill for just a home lab?

3.  I already took a globalknowledge course prepping me for VCP6.5 DCV.  And I was using their lab environment while the course was ongoing.  But now that it's over I do not have access.  Anyone know of a good step by step tutorial for building a similar virtualized lab environment? 

4. I think they nested VMs within VMs for their lab environment.  Would 2 x Xeon L5640 or E5645 be able to handle such an environment?

5.  Any Idea on RAM and Storage recommendations? How much do I really need for a lab environment? I have 9 x 146g, 4 x 32g and 1 x 72gb drives, so I think I am set on storage (unless anyone else things otherwise).  RAM I need to upgrade for sure.  I think they only have 16gb each.

I guess, in general.  What would you do with these two servers?  How you turn them into a home lab on a budget?

Thanks in advance.

Sang

[BBB36]

Those 2 should be plenty for a home lab in my opinion. I have just one desktop PC with 12 core CPU and 192GB memory. I use VMware Wokstation (all nexted ESXi, VCSA and VMs) and they're good enough for my specific needs.

[RAJ_RAJ · Accepted solution]

For Studying VCP  below configuration with Nested LAB is sufficient

3 ESXi VMs  2 CPU x 2 Core  with  Min 8 GB  or 16 GB RAM  and on VCSA with 8 GB or 16 GB

16 GB RAM ESXi required if you want to deploy any VM inside Nested setup, even Single ESXi VM with 16 Gb and  other 8 GB also works

200 Gb Storage Over All will be sufficient ( All VMs in Thin )

AD , DNS , DCHP can be on a Single VM with 8 GB RAM 2 CPU 2 CORE

[skim32]

Thanks for every one's reply.  So I ended up just using 1 of the Proliant servers. It has Dual E5645 (12 Cores / 24 threads), 48gb of RAM, and 4 x 148gb SAS drive in raid 0.  I first had it in Raid 10, but felt that it wasn't enough storage.  Currently running the following VMs:

esxi1

esxi2

esxi3

vcsa

psc

win (ad, dhcp, dns, nfs)

win (jump box)

openfiler (iscsi)

So far so good. Hopefully I will be VCP certified in no time.