vsphere home lab on desktop systems to install FT,VMA etc.

[ajaymedidi]

Hi Everyone, I am planning to build my vmware vsphere lab to try/learn all advanced features like VMDirectPath, Fault Tolerance, DPM, ,VMA and vCloud.
Initially i thought of buying a laptop with 16GB RAM to build my lab inside the laptop. But after some research I came to know FT and other features will not function in nested virtualisation. I have to go for direct virtualiztion.

So Now I am planning to buy 2 desktops because server systems produce too much noice.

Here I am scared about the CPU compatibility. I understand only few processors supports VT-d, FT and vma. I checked the compatibility in vmware site but vmware has not provided the compatibility for desktop processors.

if somebody already tried/succeeded building home lab with FT and other features on desktop systems please adivice me.

Intel i7-950
AMD   X6 1090T

these processors are available in the market with effordable prices. if processor is finalised I can select compatible mainboard/NIC/SAS ..etc.

Please help.

Thanks in Advance
AJ

[GaneshNetworks]

Ajay,

I am also looking for a spec to build my home lab.

VMware professioanls will not suggest you to test your lab in desktop processors. Coz that is not compatible for advanced features like FT,vDP, DPM and vCloud. So you have to test these things on your own risk.

FT - You can't test in nested VMs. For more check this post - http://communities.vmware.com/thread/206171. In this post, jmattson clearly says that you can't test FT in a VM.

Thanks,

Ganesh

[redbaron51]

these sites should give you a good guidance on setting up a home lab:

ultimatewhitebox.com

www.techhead.co.uk

I run mine on 2x HP ML115G5 and it is absolutely silent. It has been helping me a lot.

HTH

[ajaymedidi]

Hi Ganesh and  redbaron51,

Thank you very much for your responses.

I searched a lot  in the internet(day and night for one month) but could not find any proper solution for my requirement.

ultimatewhitebox.com - helpful site for building lab with cheapest hardware.

http://www.vm-help.com/ - really helpful site for the ppl who is looking for to build their vmware home labs

http://www.techhead.co.uk/hp-proliant-ml110-g6-released-still-a-worthy-virtualization-work-or-home-l... - I am going to follow this post

http://vinf.net/2009/05/21/cheap-vsphere-server/ -

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/Creating-a-VMware-home-lab-Dollars-and-sense - I am going to follow this post

http://www.vmwarevideos.com/video-my-home-vmware-vsphere-lab

I came to know these things in my research

1. FT can't work on Nested virtualization. ( Installing ESX in a vmware workstation) . I used this setup last year.

2. CPU and motherboard dependent features - vmware FT, VMDirectPath, DPM and vmware vma.

3. I have not find any server which FT and vma compatible.

4. I could not find any desktop which is compatible for vmware FT

I am going to buy 2 servers and few other peripherals like Gigabyte dual port network cards, Cisco switch , cables etc. Tomorrow.

Server model : HP ML 110 G6. It is a cheapest model in server hardware. ( officially this server is not supported for installing ESX but people tried and succeeded. Especially Simon (techhead) and Eric Siebert (techtarget) certified the server. Thanks to them

using those servers I can configure vmware FT, VMDirectPath, DPM, VM clusters (microsoft clustering between VMs) but not vma.

I will again get back to you with the Total cost for the setup and the issues if I face any.

Regards,

AJ

[lamw]

You actually can enable FT in a nested VM, but if you really want to test the full features of FT, you'll want a proper setup. If you just want to enable and try it out, you need to add some unsupported .vmx configurations. Here is a blog post showing you how - http://vinf.net/2009/06/07/vsphere-cannot-enable-ft-for-a-nested-vm/

Again, if you're really trying to bake out the functionality of FT, go with a real setup but if you just want to test it out say for studying purposes, vFT would work.

[ajaymedidi]

got you thanks lamw

AJ

[Rapiscan]

Hi,

What version of ESX/ESXi are you trying to set this up?

In my case, I got to the point where it says "The Fault Tolerance configuration of the entity 10.10.5.1 (Host-1) has an issue: The host does not have the capability to support Fault Tolerance. Please check the hosts summary pane of any FT incompatibility issues."

I am trying to set this up for self learning experience. Understanding the functionality of the HA, FT, vMotion, etc...

Host computer: Dell Laptop XPS L701X

Processor: i7 Q740 @ 1.73GHz

Memory: 12GB

OS: Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit

Hard drives: 2x 500GB

- HD-1: OS

- HD-2: Delicated for VMs and SAN

Workstation 7.1.4 (385536)

- Windows 2008 64-bit for vCenter

   - Second DNS server

   - Two NICs

     - 1st NIC is dedicated for DNS Server

     - 2nd NIC is dedicated for Default Gateway in the vCenter network configuration

   - vCenter has HA and DRS enabled

- Openfiler 2.3 acting as SAN (iSCSI connections)

  - Dedicated 200GB for VMs

  - 3 NICs

    - NIC-1 for iSCSI-1 (static IP)

    - NIC-2 for iSCSI-2 (static IP)

    - NIC-3 dedicated for outside network (dynamiC IP), sometimes for Updates, send e-mail of alerts, etc...

- Two ESXi Hosts, version 4.1.0 (260247)

  - 8 NICs each host

    - 2 NICs for Management Network (default gateway pointed to 2nd NIC of vCenrter)

    - 2 NICs for VM Network (Virtual machine Group)

    - 2 NICs dedicated for (iSCSI-1 & iSCSI-2),  (default gateway pointed to 2nd NIC of vCenter)

    - 2 NICs dedicated for vMotion & FTLogging (default gateway pointed to 2nd NIC of vCenter)

- One VM in the VM - Windows 2003 R2, 32-Bit as an AD and DNS Server

Everything worked fine up to the point when I tried to Turn On Fault Tolerance (vFT) on the Windows 2003 VM. It gave to me the above error message.

Any workaround?