Hello All,
I want to start studying for my VCP. I received old HP Proliant G6 DL360 servers. I believe these have the dual core XEONs in them and I want to upgrade them so that I can have a decent server for my home labs. So I guess I have a couple of questions.
1. Do I need a third server to properly setup a home lab? Or can I nest VMs to simulate multiple esxi hosts instead of having 3 hardware hosts.
2. I want replace my CPUs. I was looking at getting 2 x Xeon E5645 or L5640 for each server. Would that suffice? I guess power consumption is also a concern as after I am done with my studies, I may want to keep them running for my own server needs. Nut not so much if it will hinder my studying. Studying is higher priority. Should I spend more and go for the x5690s? Or is that overkill for just a home lab?
3. I already took a globalknowledge course prepping me for VCP6.5 DCV. And I was using their lab environment while the course was ongoing. But now that it's over I do not have access. Anyone know of a good step by step tutorial for building a similar virtualized lab environment?
4. I think they nested VMs within VMs for their lab environment. Would 2 x Xeon L5640 or E5645 be able to handle such an environment?
5. Any Idea on RAM and Storage recommendations? How much do I really need for a lab environment? I have 9 x 146g, 4 x 32g and 1 x 72gb drives, so I think I am set on storage (unless anyone else things otherwise). RAM I need to upgrade for sure. I think they only have 16gb each.
I guess, in general. What would you do with these two servers? How you turn them into a home lab on a budget?
Thanks in advance.
Sang
For Studying VCP below configuration with Nested LAB is sufficient
3 ESXi VMs 2 CPU x 2 Core with Min 8 GB or 16 GB RAM and on VCSA with 8 GB or 16 GB
16 GB RAM ESXi required if you want to deploy any VM inside Nested setup, even Single ESXi VM with 16 Gb and other 8 GB also works
200 Gb Storage Over All will be sufficient ( All VMs in Thin )
AD , DNS , DCHP can be on a Single VM with 8 GB RAM 2 CPU 2 CORE
Those 2 should be plenty for a home lab in my opinion. I have just one desktop PC with 12 core CPU and 192GB memory. I use VMware Wokstation (all nexted ESXi, VCSA and VMs) and they're good enough for my specific needs.
For Studying VCP below configuration with Nested LAB is sufficient
3 ESXi VMs 2 CPU x 2 Core with Min 8 GB or 16 GB RAM and on VCSA with 8 GB or 16 GB
16 GB RAM ESXi required if you want to deploy any VM inside Nested setup, even Single ESXi VM with 16 Gb and other 8 GB also works
200 Gb Storage Over All will be sufficient ( All VMs in Thin )
AD , DNS , DCHP can be on a Single VM with 8 GB RAM 2 CPU 2 CORE
Thanks for every one's reply. So I ended up just using 1 of the Proliant servers. It has Dual E5645 (12 Cores / 24 threads), 48gb of RAM, and 4 x 148gb SAS drive in raid 0. I first had it in Raid 10, but felt that it wasn't enough storage. Currently running the following VMs:
esxi1
esxi2
esxi3
vcsa
psc
win (ad, dhcp, dns, nfs)
win (jump box)
openfiler (iscsi)
So far so good. Hopefully I will be VCP certified in no time.