Intel processor and Mother board

[nmlsub]

Hello ,

I am planning to have an home lab to practice VCP . I will go for I7 series processor and Intel mother board with 16GB RAM ,

Please suggest me which I7 series processor and Intel mother board is good as i am having a big confusion in selecting it .

Also the storage part , like do we need the SAN set up inorder to know the concepts on HA etc or can we download an open filer/free nas s/w or shall i go with iomega nas hardware ? . If i go with iomega which would be the best model as i have seen few models are having impact on performance .

Regards,

Naveen Suresh

[scott28tt]

If you run Workstation on top of Windows or Linux you can build a lab of VMs running ESXi, vCenter Server, and shared storage too.

There's some good advice and links here: http://www.labguides.com/autolab/

[nmlsub]

Dear Scott ,

Thanks for your valuable reply . But i dont see in the link which you sent regarding the Intel I7 procesor and Mother board model . Also i do see the steps for building the lab .

Please help me out

Regards,

Naveen Suresh

[HotstartJustin]

Hello Naveen,

This website has some good info on whitebox hardware.  Last I checked they still hadn't updated the site for 5.0 but it still has some useful information regarding hardware compatibility.

http://ultimatewhitebox.com/cpu

Justin Allen

[nmlsub]

Hi Justin,

Thanks for your reply but its not been update to 5.0 but the information was usefull .

Regards,

Naveen Suresh

[scott28tt]

Building a lab out of VMs makes the board and CPU a whole lot less important - that's why it's the option most people go for, and of course you can use and re-use the physical system for other things too.

Things are different when you run ESXi directly on the physical system.

[aravinds3107]

Checkout this link

http://www.vm-help.com//esx40i/esx40_whitebox_HCL.php

[AndreTheGiant]

If you plan to use Workstation you will have not much compatibility issues.

With ESXi on physical, check some whitebox configurations.

[nmlsub]

Hi All ,

Why i am planning to build a home lab ?

1. To have hands on experience on advanced Vmware technologies .

2.Currently planning to install ESXi on workstation and after few months planning to install it on bare metal h/w and will get  one more Desktop of the same h/w , where i can learn many conceps of Vmware .

3.Planning to set my lab like an small data center where i will have hosts like Redhat linux v.6 , DHCP ,DNS , AD .etc .

After looking into many web pages found some specifications of Hardware required for home lab, which i am planning to get it .

Processor i7 Processor 2770k

Mother Board Intel DH67BL

RAM Corsair  16GB

Cooler Master 400W Cabinet

1TB HDD

DVD RW

Graphics Card Gigabite: 2GB

When i cheked the specifications of Intel i7 2770 found the following :

Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) Yes

Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) No

So is i7 2770 is the better one to have all Vsphere feautures ON if in future i install ESXi on bare metal ?

Why Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) is showing as No ? and is that related to any Vsphere feauture not available .

Intel DH67BL has not VGA port where i have to Install Graphics card , also it has an 4slots of RAM ,where i will be using 16 GB now and in future may extend to 32GB . Will it impact my performance if two slots are empty ?

Last question is i searched many pages about iomega NAS box but failed to obtain the proper Model . Please suggest me the NAS box which i can use in my lab . If i have iomega NAS box can i test all the features of vpshere or else can i use open filer application for time being ?

Please suggest me the right one as investment should be done once and later on should not worry about the h/w .

Regards,

Naveen Suresh

[AndreTheGiant]

System seems good. But consider also (if possibile) a small SSD (128GB). 

[nmlsub]

Hi ,

Thanks for your update . Please update me which iomega nas box model will give an good performance .

Regards,

Naveen Suresh

[AndreTheGiant]

Consider that you can test both iSCSI and NFS with software solutions.