Regarding home lab

[vmverma]

Hi All,

i want to know that what is the best way to create a home lab, I have two PC one is i5 with 8gb memory and other one is i7 with 32 gb memory.

should I install windows OS on my i7 machine and install workstation over it and create esxi in it or I use my i7 as esxi server and create two or three esxi server in it and use i5 to mange it.

i am not sure if I use workstation on OS, will OS kernel allow vm to share the memory and other resources like the vmware hypervisor do or not ?

thanks

Anuj Verma

[a_p_]

I'm running my home lab on an single I7-2600 with 16GB memory, and so far the only limitation was the memory. If you are looking for hints on how to setup your lab, take a look at e.g. Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab. VMware Workstation is doing a pretty good job with resource sharing.

André

[Closedgate1213]

I am currently running a nested 5.5 environment on an i7-2700k, 16Gb Ram, and 2 raid0 SSDs. 

The biggest limitation is memory with 5.5 as the hypervisor requires 4GB minimum and vcenter requires a minimum 4Gb as well.  I run workstation 10 on top of my Server 2008r2 desktop (I find server OS to have a much better memory resource distribution).  I am running a Windows 2k8 VM in Workstation 10 as my Domain controller, and then I have 2 hypervisors, one with 10Gb of RAM (This has vCenter and a second VM for the moment) and another Hypervisor running on 4.5Gb. With these sizes, this gives me plenty of room to play around with what I need to lab up anything in the Mastering vSphere 5.5 book.

I have several other VMs running off workstation, but majority of them do not run while I am using ESXi. I do have an OpenFiler Vm that also runs off Workstation for my iSCSI storage. This only requires 512Mb and I don't use it often, but it does come in handy for certain labs.

I must say, it isn't crucial to use an SSD, but I do recommend it, I use two in Raid0 as I had a second spare and the space was a bit of an issue. Once you get a couple of VMs running an SSD will make a difference to performance significantly.

That being said,  Your i5 box would just require another 8Gb of RAM and you should be all sweet to get 2 hypervisors running comfortably using 5.5..

Using Workstation will also pass through your hardware details rather than "VMware Hardware" as your CPU.

Have a play around with different configurations and definitely check out the "Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab" link posted above.

Let me know if you want to know more about Nested Environments.