'"VCP,VCAP Home lab Prep Questions:""

[zakicisco]

Hi Everyone,

I would like to setup a rig that I can practise for both my VCP AND VCAP exams, I dont know if I should either select

a.) Physical Lab

b.) Nested Lab

For the physical lab, it would be expensive to maintain(electricity) but on the other hand it would be just like a real environment

Is it possile if I go for Nested Lab and buy the below gear to practice for the mentioned exams:

Motherborad:

ASUS Sabertooth X79 LGA 2011

Ram: 32gb

Storage: Two 1TR Western Blue Caviar and 2 60GB SSD

CPU: Intel Core I7 4770, 3,4Ghz, Quad Core

Raid-Controller: Still Undecided

Would this be enough or is a little bit extreme

Please let me know

Thanks

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - Most people utlize a nested environment for a home for the exact reasons you mention - less expensive and in addition the compatability requirements of the hardware is less of an issue -

[JoshuaAndrewsVM]

As a data point, VCAP Test Track is a DCA simulation/reproduction run at VMworld and various VMUG events.  It includes all of the components used by the DCA exam, and it was developed and runs on a 3-year-old laptop with an i7 CPU, 16GB RAM and a SSD drive.  I have run it on a 7200RPM drive which is fine but increased boot time and VM deploy/create time.

[TraianC]

I am also thinking on building a home lab for training for VCAP.

I now have on Cisco 2960 switch and planning to buy two or three HP ProLiant DL360 G5 servers from a company that sells used equimpent here in my country. It all depends on how much money do you have and what do you want to get from your infrastructure.

[mbmaplethorpe]

Not sure what you went for in terms of a lab in the end, but I would be intrigued to know.

I too wondered what to do in order to prepare for VCP5-DV but opted for a nested lab built in Workstation 9 mainly down to budget and also because my better half isn't keen on the house filled to the brim with servers

I used a useful guide as basis and tweaked if based on the official material for a vSphere 5.5 install. That in itself has been a great learning process for me. 32GB RAM was also a massive help, 16GB didn't quite cut it for two ESXi hosts, especially with new RAM requirements for 5.5.