NSX Lab Preparation

[sidymani]

Hi Everyone,

I have a question regarding NSX Home Lab preparation.

I have 2  Servers - one with ESXi v6 and another with v6.5. Each has 32 GB RAM and 1TB HDD. There are already few machines installed on both and I don't want to delete those machines.

I read on few sites that min. RAM for NSX Lab will take 32 GB. As I have 2 Servers, so I wanted to use both of them for lab. Can anyone help me here regarding distribution of vCenter and other VMs?

P.S - Both are connected through Cisco 3750 L3 Switch.

[Sreec]

Sizing totally depends upon use case -> what you are planning to test. For sure we cant test all the functionalities in one go. What you can do is

1) Ensure all VM's are deployed in thin format- Management and Workload

2) Virtual Machine testing ,use DSL(Linux distro) - Can't test all features with this -L2/L3/LB/DFW is possible -not identity based IDFW.

3) NSX Manager resource can be tweaked ,but don't go too low - 1-2 VCPU with 4-5gb Ram is required

4) Deploy Just one controller and limit the resource to 1 vCPU and 1-2 gb Ram

VMware Hol Labs are great so use  it whenever situation demands - advanced routing,two site testing with DR etc etc.

[sidymani]

Hi Sreec,

I am preparing lab for VCP-NV. Sorry, I didn't elaborate earlier.

Just want to do everything from scratch for better understanding of NSX etc.

I need 3 Clusters - 2 hosts, 2 hosts, 1 host. NSX Manager and vCenter.

Shall I put 3 Clusters on one server and NSX Manager, vCenter, Edge, Controller on another? As I will install ESXi on ESXi, this will be nested. Anything particular that I need to take care for networking the clusters?

[Sreec]

Good to know you are preparing for exam . You can deploy all infra components on those two server(AD/DNS/DHCP/Third Party routers/ESXI,VC,PSC,NSX manager etc ) So for network simplicity sake deploy all these components in same L2 . Based on the host count what you need ,create that many number of host and add it to the respective VC cluster(These all will be nested including the Edge&CP cluster) . Follow NSX practices for DVS and MTU settings . Better go with Esxi Mac learning filter -> ESXi Mac Learning dvFilter  for VM mac reachability or simply enable promiscuous mode.Follow my last points for NSX CP deployment and workload VM's . I follow this method because of various reasons . All My management VM and network setting will be on main server ,however for NSX use case ,nested infra is used and clean-up and any break-fix will not impact or will not demand any change in main server.