Home Lab Setup

[HomeLabSetup]

Hi ,

I want set up vSphere lab on laptop for practice. My laptop specs are as follows:

Intel i5-2450M CPU @ 2.5 GHz, 2501 Mhz, 2 cores, 4 logical processors

8 GB Physical memory with 1600 MHz speed

500 GB HDD

I installed VMware workstation and now, I would like to know if i can install 2 ESXis with 2-4 VMs on each.

If possible, will there be any performance issues? If not possible, please suggest me the number of esxis and vms to be installed on each to practice.

Note: I cannot make changes to hardware of my laptop.

Thanks in advance.

[BenLiebowitz]

Hmmm... 8gb may be a little limiting due to minimum memory requirements for ESXi 5.5. 

I recommend you look into Autolab.  You download the lab from them, and then copy the ISOs and installation media to the NAS VM and everything builds out for you.  It includes a NAS VM (as I mentioned), a router, etc...

http://www.labguides.com/autolab

[RyanH84]

Hi,

Is that a bog standard 500GB 7,200rpm hard disk?

If so you are going to struggle quite a bit with disk performance. Things will work but might take hours depending on what you deploy. As the previous posted said, look into AutoLab. I think 12GB is the recommended minimum for that setup but you could probably tweak it down and get away with 8VM's if you are lucky.

Without question, replace your laptop HDD with  an SSD though, 250GB should be enough, 120GB might be a bit of a stretch.

Cheers,

Ryan

[jrmunday]

Based on my own lab (struggling with 16GB RAM), memory is going to be your biggest issue. As an example, you might need to deploy the following at a minimum;

- 1x Domain Controller (running AD, DNS) - Windows 2012, 1GB RAM

- 1x File Server appliance (for example. FreeNAS, Open Filer), 1 GB RAM

- 1x vCenter application server or applicance, 4GB RAM

- 2x ESXi 5.5 hosts, 8GB RAM (4GB each)

... and you obviously need some to run the OS and applications.

I think a home lab needs a minimum of 32GB RAM to emulate anything realistic.

Cheers,

Jon

[COS]

If RAM won't kill you, your Laptop's hard drive will.

Even if it's a 7200RPM drive with 16MB of cache. Nested Virtualization will tax the bejeeebers out of your hard drive.

Unless you have an SSD.

Now, if you do have a spindle drive and your laptop has a physical CD/DVD, I would recommend this...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2nd-Hard-Drive-HDD-SSD-SATA-Optical-Bay-Caddy-Adapter-swap-UJ265-UJ-265-Slim...

along with an SSD that matches the controller on your laptop, SATA II (285 Read/275 Write) or SATA III (550 Read/525 Write).

[mjha]

I too struggled in setting up home lab with 16 GB. Definitely memory is biggest issue. I want to setup Lab for practicing VCAP but I am totally clueless how to begin with. Thinking of renting some cloud service providers for hosting my lab for 1-2 months.