VMware 6.5 LAB

[noorani92]

Hello everyone,

We are planning to upgrade our vmware infrastructure in our office. But prior to that I would like to setup a test environment. I have managed to get a single IBM x3650M2 server with Intel Xeon Dual processor, 36GB RAM and 2TB storage.

I have installed ESXI 6.5 on my physical host and configured a static IP address from our office network. How should I proceed further for building a lab environment to deploy nested ESXI, manage those nested ESXI with vCSA.

Also, how do I restrict the lab from our office network as I would also like to test AD, DNS and DHCP server using Microsoft Windows Server 2016.

Looking forward to the responses.

TIA.

[daphnissov]

Just so you know, not that you probably care because this is a lab, but for compatibility issues you may see the M2s and M3s are not supported on anything above 5.5. This may cause you issues down the line.

As far as setting up a nested lab, William Lam has a lot of good articles on the subject as well as some pre-built ESXi appliances which I'd *strongly* recommend you use over rolling your own.

For network isolation, you'll need to firewall it off with some other type of appliance, using NSX (if you have it), or create a new network that is non-routable.

[virtuallysekar]

I prefer using nested ESXi, and if you want to isolate in terms of network create a vSwitch with no network adapter so they will have internal communication and would be isolated from your offie environment

If you think you need to connect to the internet without using or interrupting your office network I would suggest you to NAT the network

Let me know if you have questions

[noorani92]

Thank you for your response.

I need to deploy vCSA as well. Should I deploy it on the physical esxi and assign an IP from our office network? Or I should also separate it out, first deploy nested esxi and deploy vCSA on the nested esxi?

[virtuallysekar]

It depends on your requirements

I once had a setup with multiple VM's and one nested ESXi just to check how things works

If you need clustering features then you need to go for nested ESXi if not just keep it simple. Based on the config of your server you cannot deploy too many VM's even if you over commit keep that in account when you design a plan