Virtualization home lab setup - completely new change of career...

[squoggy]

Hello all,

So moving into a completely new area and am on a steep learning curve - any thoughts on this please...

Setting up a home lab to learn as cheap as poss for now..

Have:

HP Proliant Server

16 GB RAM

3 x 250 GB SATA HDDs - formatted.

vSphere/EXSi 5.5

Have installed ESXi onto a USB stick and booting from USB stick and have created 250GB datastore from 1 of the 250GB SATA drives.

So am at the very beginning of learning currently.

How would I go about installing another EXSi host so I can learn vMotion, DRS etc?

Do I install a new VM with EXSi on it or can I somehow install EXSi on one of the other spare hard disk drives?

From research I have installed my main EXSI host onto a USB stick - is it best to install from USB or bare metal?

Thanks folks for any advice..

Cheers

Si..

[pmetzger77]

As to how you install, I don't think it matters as long as it gets installed. To test VMotion etc, you will need a second physical host, central storage and at least 3 NIC's per server(Manage, Vmo/Sec Manage(not recommended), and storage). You also need vcenter server. There is a lot to make Vmotion run, but it is well worth it when it's up and running.

I'm unsure if you could install ESXi, and run it on a pair of VM's to setup the lab or not... I have yet to try it... though now that you mention it...

If you are just starting though, I would recommend getting used to VMware as a whole first, then throw in vmotion. It can be a bit of a system shock when you first start out with it. Lots to learn, etc...

[admin]

Hi,

Its a great way to learn VMware through lab, you can even get issues and troubleshooting during the progress.

Part1 :

Creating a Host - :

First Install the ESXi 5.5 on your server - I would go with USB install.( easier to troubleshoot )

Download and install the vsphere client -- connect to host and Next Add Storage -

create a test VM - power ON and install a OS and see how it goes.

Part 2 :

Playing with Storage :

Create a VM - and install a VSA like Open filer or freeNAS on the VM - use the hard disks to create a Storage that can stimulate an iscsi  SAN or other

You could play around with storage - A lot to learn in storage.

Part 3 :

Nested ESXi - To create a vCenter server

* create two more VM's install ESXi onto the VM's - make network configurations - do not worry about DNS or Domain for now.

* Create another VM - Install vCenter Server - Add Hosts to VC- Now you should have 3  hosts on VC to play around.

Present the storage that was created to all the Hosts and make shared data store' - for storage vMotion and vMotion.

The above set-up should be good enough to start with. once your comfortable with VC and options.

Next would be create a VM - promote to DC, configure DNS -  and add the hosts to the domain and have your private VMware environment

to test out all other options which requires a domain to work

Thanks,
Avinash

[squoggy]

Hi folks,

Thanks for your prompt responses! Appreciate it..

Completely new career path for me but determined to learn as much as poss.

A doing the free Vcenter/cloud courses also at the moment.

So am going to start a fresh install via USB, then install 2 VM's as EXSi hosts and go from there..

Will let you knowmy progress....

Thanks again..

Simon..

[admin]

Great.. As I said earlier for a cloud lab you do need a an active directory and DNS..!!! let us know if you have any issue's..

Enjoy the Best of learning..!!

[squoggy]

Hi again...

Quick update and quick query if possible please..

Unsure whether to start a new thread on this but just a quick query..

Have managed to setup EXSi host with vCenter running on top as a VM. (Next step,hopefully active directory - windows server)

Have setup ESXi as static 192.168.0.254 and vCenter as static 192.168.0.253.

My question is, is it possible to access these from outside my home network as I would have more time to learn and experiment outside home. I guess certain ports would need forwarding...?

So basically can I access vCenter from outside my LAN via a web browser?

Thanks again..

Si...

[admin]

Hello,

you should be able to access it , I usually use the Hamachi, (free)
https://secure.logmein.com/products/free/

and to ADD When you use it with Hamachi, you no longer have to forward ports and figure out IP addresses. The IP address that Hamachi assigns to each system is exactly what you’ll type in to take over that system.

Thanks,
Avinash