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masti
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Lab setup help

Hi

I am setting up lab at home for my VCP exam, I have 2 Dell Poweredge T310 servers which came with 4gb ram on each and i have really hard time finding perfect RAM for these servers. i have tried differnet brand and types as suggested by Dell Specs but none of them have worked. If i had to buy from Dell atleast to make the servers having 8gb on each its  costing me more than $500 which i don't know if its worth it to spend.

Please suggest if 4GB on each system is good enough for my Home lab. I have quad-core desktop with 8gb ram for VC.

I am fed up looking for RAM at differnet places so i am thinking if 4gb on each server is good enogh then i will keep the servers if not planning to sell and buy a Desktop with atleast 16gb ram so i can have vmware workstation installed and use it .

Please suggest , thanks in advance.

-Masti

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weinstein5
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I believe the CLark Dale series is the new family of Intel procs - so I will bet your procs are the Lynnfield family but Dell is pretty good at being able to provide that information based off of the service tage from your servers -

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weinstein5
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For a lab to learn vSphere 4 GB should be fine - being a labe you are not as conserned about performance but more learing how to setup aand work with VMware -

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masti
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Would the same lab with 4gb is also good for vsphere 5 and VCAP in future ?

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weinstein5
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It would - the only concern I would have is the suppport for older hardware in vSphere 5

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masti
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Currently my servers has this

One Quad-core Intel® Xeon® 3400 series processor
4gb ram
2 250gb HDD
5 PCIe G2 slots
on-board dual NIC

Do you think these wont support ? is there a place where i can check if these servers would support Vsphere 5 or not , if they dont then i better sell it and have a desktop later when i am ready for vsphere 5 i can look for something which support.

Whats your suggestion on this ? sorry to ask too many questions as i am setting up lab for first time so not aware of all these .

-Masti

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masti
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from the compatibility guide i could see these systems listed , How would i know if my system is ClarkDale Series or Lynnfield Series ?

DELLPowerEdge T310Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series
ESXi
5.0
ESX
4.1 U14.14.0 U34.0 U2...

ESXi Installable
4.1 U14.14.0 U34.0 U2...

DELLPowerEdge T310Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series
ESXi
5.0
DELLPowerEdge T310Intel Xeon 34xx Lynnfield Series
ESXi
5.0
ESX
4.1 U14.14.0 U34.0 U2...

ESXi Installable
4.1 U14.14.0 U34.0 U2...
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weinstein5
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I believe the CLark Dale series is the new family of Intel procs - so I will bet your procs are the Lynnfield family but Dell is pretty good at being able to provide that information based off of the service tage from your servers -

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masti
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would with 4gb ram on each and with these 2 servers would i be able to prepare for VCAP exam also ? or i would need better hardware for performance and to test and work .. what are your thoughts ...

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weinstein5
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It should be - your lab will give you a platform to gain the necessary experience for the VCAP DCA - the VCAP DCD (design) is a little trickier in that it is not interacting with the vSPhere Envrionment but more understanding what the best practices and to how to design a vSphere environment -

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