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mali1775
Contributor
Contributor

VCP lab setup at home

Hi

This is my first post on Vmware.

I wanted to share my vmware vsphere 4.1 setup for training. I have spent a bit of money on second hand equipment

Domain controller ( DNS, DCHP ) is a dell laptop D530 with windows 2003 server on it

- intel dual core 2GHz

- 1 GB Ram

- 80 GB HDD

- Onboard Nic

VCenter is a dell laptop D530 with Windows 2008 R2 server 64bit ( 64bit OS required for vcenter 4.1 )

- intel dual core 2GHz

- 2.5 Gb Ram ( vcenter likes to eat ram ) I need a better machune for vcenter, thinking of buying another dell 755 for this.

- 80 GB HDD

- Onboard Nic

3 ESX 4.1  Servers are Dell optiplex 755 SSF with

- intel quad core 2.83 GHz ( Q9550 ) upgraded.

- 8 GB Ram

- 80gb HDD

- on board nic is intel

- Nic No.2 is Intel Pro 1000 GT Desktop Adapter

beware vpshere 4.1 does not like some of the cd roms on the dell 755

Openfiler San ( free Software ) is a Dell optiplex 755 SSF with

- intel dual core 1.8 GHz

- 4 GB Ram

- 250gb HDD

- Onboard Nic

Main Pc is a Dell optiplex 760

- intel dual core 2.5 Ghz

- 3 GB Ram

- 80 GB HDD

- ATI Redeon 2400 dual vga port

- 2 19" DELL Monitors

have got a 5 port gigabit switch and a asus wireless acess ( point 5 port) which is only 100mb switch

upgrading to a 24 port gigabit switch looking at a netgear GS724T managed switch.

you need a good gigabit switch when doing FT AND Vmotion require gigabit connection but does work on 100mb network.

My Esx servers are fully working with all advance stuff like DRS, Vmotion, SVmotion, HA and FT. Thats right FT is working. You need the Intel Q9550 CPU For this to work.

Have alook at my vsphere setup map.

I hope this helps people setting up their lab. As it is very hard building a pc that can do all th advance stuff as you all may know sphere is very fussy on hardware. It took me alot of time researching about hardware and what cpu to use.

Im attending the Vsphere 4.1 install, manage and configure course tomorrow.

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6 Replies
habibalby
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hello,

If you are upgrading VCP3 to VCP4 then you have to consider ESX3.5 and upgrade them to ESX4 and then to ESX4.1. Some questions might come related to the upgrade path from 3.5 to 4, and update manager utility. So you have to be familre with them as well.

My Lab is VMWare Workstation 6.5

Dell E4300 Intel-VT with CPU 7500 and 6 GB of memory.

two ESX3.5 and vCenter 2.5 without Domain Controller.

The vCenter upgraded to vCenter 4.0 on the same machine.

The two ESX4.0 upgraded to ESX4 using VMware Update Manager.

Best Regards, Hussain Al Sayed Consider awarding points for "correct" or "helpful".
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RajuVCP
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Good LabSetup at home, these hands on practice can make through the Exam..:)

Regards

Raju Gunnal

http://www.tech2solution.com/forum

Raju Gunnal VCP 4, VCP 5, VTSP 4, VTSP 5, ITIL V3 http://www.techtosolution.com
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bulletprooffool
Champion
Champion

Nice lab - though it must suck a fair amount of power? - Do you pay the electricity bills 😉

One day I will virtualise myself . . .
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mali1775
Contributor
Contributor

Its not that bad.

I only have them switched on when i need to use them.

Upgraded to a netgear gs724t 24 switch and instead of openfiler on a pc as a san. I have purchased a qnap-439 pro NAS BOX with 4 x 1TB Samsung F3 drives.

the vm startup much faster now.

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dmwj80
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jburleigh
Contributor
Contributor

I guess I will chime in with my lab.

Currently I am running ESX 4.1 and ESX 4.1 on Dell hardware.  I like the 840 due to the noise factor, SATA drives, and the cost.  Then can be found on Ebay with decent configs for $200.00.  I was running some PE2650s and PE2850s but the SCSI drives and cooling are too loud.  Even in the garage.

Running Exch 2010, SQL 2005, Oracle 11g, Unisphere 1.1, and CUCM 7.0 for VoIP.  Unisphere is hosting CiFS shares for Windows clients and NFS shares for ISO, and templates for ESX hosts.  I also run Rosetta@home.

ESX 4.1

Dell Poweredge 840

Quad-Core Xeon x3220 2.4 GHz

8 GB RAM

Mirrored 250 GB SATA

2 Intel PRO/1000GT NICs

1 Broadcom BCM5721 Gigabit

1 Qlogic 2340 HBA

ESXi 4.1

Dell Poweredge 840

Quad-Core Xeon x3210 2.13 GHz

8 GB RAM

Mirrored 250 GB SATA

2 Intel 82541PI Gigabit NICs

1 Broadcom BCM5721 Gigabit

1 Qlogic 2340 HBA

Virtual Center 4.1

Server 2008 64bit

Dell Poweredge 840

Dual-Core Xeon

4 GB RAM

Mirrored 250 GB OS

Mirrored 1 TB iSCSI (Starwind Software or Rocket iSCSI)

1 MCDATA Spherion 4500 24 port Fabric Switch with 8 gbics

1 JetStor 416f with 16 TB RAW disk space fiber attached to switch above

On the way....

Two more Quad-Core Dell Powedge 840s for another cluster and Cisco 9120 Fabric Switch.  Possibly a couple of EVA PD02 for View.  Plan is to share out the second cluster for friends for lab time.

At work it is all IBM x3650 M3s, EMC CX4 with Replication Manager for SCSI over IP to a DR site to another CX4.  Was using Veeam a few years back and it worked great.  95% virtual.

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