recommendations

[Jord9857]

Hi all,

Just wanna get some recommendations on an server/desktop to run VMware VSphere, I'm looking to advance my IT career and get some experience using VMware to create & use some VM's etc at home.

I've currently got a Dell PowerEdge R200 server, but the CPU is too old in order to install VMware VSphere on unfortunately as i tried & doesn't support virtualization for Hyper V on the Windows Server 2016 OS.

I had a brief look at this ESXi Hardware Requirements .

Is there any recommendations of servers/desktops i can buy fairly cheap, as this is only going to be used for testing purposes. I was thinking about an old i5 desktop or an HP Microserver N54L G7...

Thanks

[NathanosBlightc]

Regardless of the vendor or system type that you want to buy for a simple lab in one or two PC/Desktop/Server, consider for provisioning of a simple vSphere lab, you need totally more than 16 GB Memory: 8 GB for the VCSA and 2 test VMs for deploying nested ESXi with at least 4 GB and a little for your client system to manage the virtual infrastructure! Whatever else you wish to deploy, you need more physical memory resources.

[NicolasAlauzet]

Also, you can user Vmware Hands On Lab  VMware Learning Platform

There you will found from basic labs to more advanced ones. And you can get some practice and reading documentation or blogs is also a good way to start with vmware.

[Jord9857]

What processor(s) do you recommend?

Would a HP Microserver G7 processor (AMD Turion II Neo) be good enough? I don't want buy one and find out that it's slow/not compatible like the Dell Poweredge i got.

Kind Regards

[scott28tt]

Good ideas and tips here:

https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/nested-virtualization​

https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/home-lab

[NathanosBlightc]

It highly depends on what you need to do, and which services/applications you want to provide in your lab/test environment ...

You should calculate the required vCPU & vRAM based on the processor & memory requirements of your Application! For example, if you consider deploying the NSX solution in the future, I can strongly say your resources are not enough at all ...