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lvaibhavt
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

VMware NSX Lab on VMware Workstation

Hi All,

I am starting with VMware NSX and have couple of questions that I wanted to ask you guys.

I have a desktop with 16gb RAM. I have installed Windows 7 and I run VMware Workstation on it.

In my VMware workstation I have created multiple VM's/ESXi Hosts and do my test practise.

With my desktop will I be able to setup VMware NSX Lab or will I require anything else to setup NSX Lab.

Any suggestion will be much appreciated.

Thanks

Vaibhav

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RaymundoEC
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

I believe you are OK for Home Lab, just take on account that SSD will help you up with this lab and far from there there a couple of home labs on the web that can be useful for start do something interesting, or if you have ever work with HOLS for NSX try to mimic the environment (obviously make the adjustment), since all of those are visualized complete, in short you will need two ESXi hosts for management cluster , two more for compute and such.

cheers!

+vRay

+vRay
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lvaibhavt
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

So all the switch configurations that are needed to be done ---- can be done in the VMware Workstation ?

I will buy a SSD to boost my enviornment.

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RaymundoEC
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

if you mean vWires and such, yes, if you need something more advance to try like ECMP you will need at least a pair of physical switches and one physical router, this is more advance, for the other things you will be OK.

here is an example on basics of vXLAN on Workstation from Kevin Barrass using vSM

Simple VXLAN lab on Workstation viewing traffic with Wireshark Part - 1

vxlan blog 1.gif

regards

+vRay

+vRay
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AnthonyM
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I expect you will struggle on the RAM front. You need:

1 NSX Manager @ 8GB RAM

1 vCenter Server @ 5.5GB RAM

Take 1GB for you host, and you are at 13.5GB

You almost certainly want AD integration, so another 1GB for that.

Each ESX host needs 4 GB allocating (although you may get away with not using it), usual LAB design would be 6 ESX hosts, 2 each in Management, compute1 and compute 2 to play with cross cluster transport domains etc. You can probably get away with 2, and with a couple of Linux VMs, they may use as little as 2GB

So now you are at 16.5GB RAM. Everything is at it's minimum, and so running slowly, and you don't yet have any NSX controllers.....

I've tried this, and it wasn't pretty.

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rbenhaim
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

This is the full NSX for vSphere Specifications:


VM

vCPU

Memory

Storage

Quantity

NSX for vSphere Manager

4

12 GB

60 GB

1

NSX for vSphere Controller

4

4 GB

20 GB

3

NSX for vSphere Edge service gateway

1 (compact)

2 (large)

4 (quad-large)

6 (x-large)

512 MB (compact)

1 GB (large)

1 GB (quad-large)

8 GB (x-large)

512 MB

512 MB

512 MB

  1. 4.5 GB
    (+4 GB Swap)

Varies with use case

Distributed Logical Router Control VM

1

512 MB

512 MB

Typically 2 in HA pair

Guest Introspection

2

1 GB

4 GB

1 per ESXi

NSX Data Security

1

512 MB

6 GB

1 per ESXi

For Home lab you can manipulate the the hardware requirements from Tom Fojta's Blog:

Homelab: Downsizing NSX Controller | Tom Fojta's Blog

This is 100% not supported !!!

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