Esxi 5 home lab

[ImranMogal]

Hi All

What is best way to build esxi 5 home lab on windows 7 64 bit with vm workstation 8 for vcp 5 exam

I have macbook pro with 500 hdd 2.3 quad-core with 8 gb memory

Installed windows 7 64 bit and workstation 8

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You'll want to create 2 ESXi VMs.  They'll need 2 GB RAM each and you can allocate about 5 GB to storage.  That'll be enough for the install and the ESXi VMs can use shared storage.  You can then create Windows VM to run vCenter.  That VM can also host NFS or iSCSI shares that the ESXi VMs will access. 

Workstation 8 is able to virtualize HV so you'll be able to run nested 64 bit guests on your ESXi VMs.  http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8970

With 3 VMs (2 x ESXi, 1 vCenter) you'll be able to test and learn about most of the vSphere features.  You could also deploy the vCenter Appliance instead  of vCenter, but it is not feature complete with vCenter Server.

Dave
VMware Communities User Moderator

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[MattG]

I am assuming you mean VM Fusion 4 for the MBP?

I am not familiar Fusion,  but with Workstation 8 on a PC I would recommend the following:

• Download and use the HP (Lefthand) VSA Laptop version as it only requires 384MB memory and supports VAAI: http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/vsa/trial/index.html
• Install vCenter as a VM in Worksation,  not nested as a VM on ESXi as it will be much faster.
• Workstation allows you to overcommit memory,  so if the 8GB of memory isn't enough,  you can overcomitt the memory and Workstation will write a VMEM file to disk.  If you can put this VMEM file on an SSD then the performance penalty isn't too bad.  Leaving on a normal HDD could be painful.

Sphere 5 LAB config:

• ESX01:
  • 40GB thin disk
  • 2GB mem
  • 8 vNICS
    • vmnic0, 1 = vSwitch0 (NAT) - Management
    • vmnic2,3 = vSwitch1 (Private VMNET) - iSCSI
    • vmnic4,5 = vSwitch2 (Private VMNET) - vMotion
    • vmnic6,7 = vswitch3 (NAT) - VN Network
• ESX02:
  • 40GB thin disk
  • 2GB mem
  • 8 vNICS
    • vmnic0, 1 = vSwitch0 (NAT) - Management
    • vmnic2,3 = vSwitch1 (Private VMNET) - iSCSI
    • vmnic4,5 = vSwitch2 (Private VMNET) - vMotion
    • vmnic6,7 = vswitch3 (NAT) - VN Network
• VC01
  • 4GB mem
  • 100GB thin disk
  • Load all of the options to this VM (SQL Express, SYSlog, Dump, Auto-Deploy)
• HP VSA:
  • 384MB
  • 200GB disk in 2GB file increments
  • Create all LUNs as thin

You can do everything with this config except Fault Tolerance.  Though having an SSD to run these VMs from,  either internal or external with at least a Firewire, eSata, or USB port 3 would be recommened.

-MattG