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Thread: My VMware home lab

  1. #1
    Splash
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    My VMware home lab

    So... following on from Strike-Down's thread here I figured I might as well put together a post explaining my homelab which I use for tinkering about with a whole bunch of stuff, but mostly VMware. I work for a VMware partner, so I need to stay current with all of their stuff and while their Hands On Labs are an excellent resource for stepping through specific scenarios I find that there's nothing like being able to get your hands dirty by breaking and fixing stuff to really get to know a product.

    My lab has grown over the years, from an old Dell Poweredge which I think I bought off Moby-Dick in the For Sale threads to it's current iteration which is technically 2 separate labs. One lab environment is just my desktop pc, which runs an i7 2700k (at stock) with 32Gb of RAM. There's a Dell PERC6 which has 5 300Gb 10k WD Velociraptors which I used to use for lab work, but these have largely been replaced with a 500Gb SSD which I use Autolab to build a nested lab on. If you're doing nested virtualisation (essentially running a virtualised vSphere on either a vSphere server, Workstation or Fusion) then I can't recommend an SSD highly enough.

    Autolab is a great tool for lab deployment once you have the requirements together (you'll need to download some free media that they can't provide as part of the kit due to copyright).

    Ok, so that's the basic nested lab, but what about the "proper" stuff? Storage-wise I recycled an old HP ML115 and installed an HP P410 RAID controller. This is running FreeNAS, and has an Icy-Dock 6x2.5" to 1x5.25" bay converter which has 4x500Gb WD Caviar Blue disks and 2 SSDs for cache (40Gb for read, 120Gb for write). I also have a second ML115 that's powered down most of the time with 4 2Tb disks in, which I use for testing "secondary" storage - ie tinkering with different VSAs so I can learn different storage vendors' interfaces. The compute nodes are 3 Intel NUC devices, each running an i3-3217U at 1.8Ghz and 16Gb of RAM. I was doing some testing with PernixData FVP, so each NUC also has a 60Gb mSATA SSD in it which is currently unused (the FVP license was only good for the 30 day trial which has since expired) so I may have another look at vFlash in order to actually get some use out of them. ESXi is installed on a tiny USB key that hangs out of the back of the unit, but only protrudes maybe 1cm or so (less than the power cable does). The big downside to the NUCs is that there's only a single NIC, so you can't physically separate your storage and management traffic - as such I had to VLAN these off at the port groups and trunk the ports on the switch. The other caveat is that the ESXi 5.5 installer is missing NIC drivers for the NUC, so you need to create a custom installer, though this is easy enough - Alex Galbraith writes a solid how-to at http://www.tekhead.org/blog/2013/01/...-nuc-part-2-2/

    I'm using a Cisco SG300-10 switch (you can use a much cheaper one, but I need to get more experienced with the IOS CLI so I figured this one would do the job).

    Finally I have an N36L Microserver with 3 local SSDs installed which runs as my "management" box. In a proper environment I'd want a cluster of at least 2 hosts for this role, but space and finances don't allow this at home. This box has 16Gb of RAM installed and is running ESXi from the internal USB port - it has plenty of grunt to run the VCenter Server Appliance, a couple of domain controllers (not sure why I have 2 on there now, to be honest) and a ZenOSS monitoring box.

    Backup-wise I use a combination of Nakivo and Veeam (both offer a 2 socket license for eval purposes to VCPs - Here's hoping that "homelab" constitutes eval, or Moby-Dick will be kicking me...) to backup to another HP Microserver running Server 2012, and the Veeam is then replicated to a second box (a Thecus N5200Pro NAS that I bought from Funkstar here a number of years ago).

    That's your lot, really. I was going to pull together a Visio diagram with it all in, but I don't have a Visio license at home. If there's any interest I can probably pull it together from work one day. Feel free to ask any questions, or point out where I've made an obvious mistake
    Last edited by Splash; 17-05-2014 at 09:54 AM.

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  3. #2
    Senior Member strike-down's Avatar
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    Re: My VMware home lab

    You sir are a scholar and a gentleman! Plenty of info to digest (or at least attempt to!) I'm pretty sure I can work everything out from it, but a diagram or two would certainly go a long way :-) I'm sure I'll have a question or twenty once I've had a chance to read it all properly after work today. Huge thanks for this!
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  4. #3
    Splash
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    Re: My VMware home lab

    No problem - looking back at the OP I can see that it's a bit of a wall o'text...

    That said: unless you have access to actual licenses you're going to be looking at a regular rebuild (VMware demo licenses are valid for 60 days), so I'd strongly recommend looking at a single unit so you can make use of Autolab.

    There's also the option of using something like BareMetalCloud, which will deploy Autolab for you on a PAYG model. I've not used them myself, but Mike Laverick has and it sounds like their pricing model is pretty competitive. If you're just getting up to speed with VMware you could do a lot worse than to have a read through his site. Mike's an ex VMware instructor, and currently their Senior Cloud Infrastructure Evangelist (ask him what that means) and writes a lot of instructional guides, currently developing a "Back to basics" guide which will get you up to speed in no time at all.

    If there's any interest I can happily post a bunch of websites, blogs, people on Twitter and any number of other things that I find useful from a virt perspective - some may be a bit in depth, but they're all great resources and the community is *very* welcoming.

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    Re: My VMware home lab

    We try to be the 2 Socket key Veeam gives out is an NFR, so no problems there !
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    Re: My VMware home lab

    Veeams free 2 socket license only last 1 year....Plenty of time for evaluating and learning though.

    @Splash: 120GB SSD cache with FreeNAS? That isn't good. ZILs should be very small and only needed in very particular scenarios and can cause performance impacts when used incorrectly.
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    Re: My VMware home lab

    You should be able to get another key after your existing one expires - its just generally to ensure that we know who is using it. If you get stuck , let me know.
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    Re: My VMware home lab

    Quote Originally Posted by Moby-Dick View Post
    You should be able to get another key after your existing one expires - its just generally to ensure that we know who is using it. If you get stuck , let me know.
    Ah, that makes it sound like you work for veeam.....if so, please tell me your working on making the copy facility more robust! Multiple open cases going nowhere fast.....
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    Re: My VMware home lab

    Ah, that makes it sound like you work for veeam
    There's a reason for that can you Pm me your case number and I'll look into it.
    my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net

  10. #9
    Splash
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    Re: My VMware home lab

    Quote Originally Posted by shaithis View Post
    Veeams free 2 socket license only last 1 year....Plenty of time for evaluating and learning though.

    @Splash: 120GB SSD cache with FreeNAS? That isn't good. ZILs should be very small and only needed in very particular scenarios and can cause performance impacts when used incorrectly.
    As Moby said, the NFRs can be renewed at the end of the year. SSD-wise I just had a couple of them kicking around unused so figured I'd throw them in the box - I get a small (to be honest, given the hardware I was surprised to even get this much) boost from them.

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    Re: My VMware home lab

    Have you tried using them with something like Pernix ? I'd be interested to see if you get a boost off that.
    my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net

  12. #11
    Splash
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    Re: My VMware home lab

    Quote Originally Posted by Moby-Dick View Post
    Have you tried using them with something like Pernix ? I'd be interested to see if you get a boost off that.
    Can't fit them in the NUCs, but that's ok because I'd picked up 3 60Gb mSATA SSDs to trial with FVP. FVP is great, and I did a bunch o'tests with SQL servers and the like which saw a chunky boost, however the stuff I wrote (which I intended to stick on my blog which I have yet to get around to starting...) appears to have gone walkies. I'll drop the Pernix guys a line and see if I can get my hands on another trial set of licenses for when I next have some free time if it's of interest?

    They did a case study at the last Yorkshire VMUG for FVP which was run by one of the local VMUG leaders. It was pretty warts and all, but the numbers he was quoting (the user, not the Pernix marketing guys) were pretty impressive in terms of the amount of spindles they were able to power off without losing performance.

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    Re: My VMware home lab

    Thanks for the post. I've never heard of Autolab.
    I'm a bit sad about my setup. Late last year I upgraded/replaced my PC purely to get more RAM and nested VM capability. Got 32GB RAM, i5-3570K and a 500GB SSD.
    Used it about twice as a lab so far. Too busy at work and home.
    I have another setup though - 2 Microservers and an HP ML330 G6 with 36GB RAM and a P410 with 512MB BBWC. I use Veeam on that as well but the whole thing's out of date - Running ESXi 5.1U2 and I haven;t even got round to updating the Vcenter Server to 5.1U2 yet.

    P.S. Moby, any news about native tape encryption support on Veeam? It's the one area where Backup exec has Veeam beaten.
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    Re: My VMware home lab

    Nothing I can officially say at this point
    my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net

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    Re: My VMware home lab

    Hi all,

    I used to have a hardware home lab when studying for the VCP4.1 exam (2x Proliant ML115 + 1x Proliant ML115 storage), which I have donate to charity.

    I am feeling the need of setting up another home lab so I can use not only for VMware but also to try out other products/solutions (NetApp simulator, vSAN, etc).

    I have been thinking of getting a powerful laptop (workstation) and set up a nested lab (VMware Workstation software).

    Checking on ebay, I've been looking at Dell Precision M4700 or M4800; Hp Elitebook 8570W, HP zBook G2

    Do you guys know sellers/companies that I could try to get one of this? Purchasing from the US, any drawbacks?

    Another option would be a single tower server fillup with RAM and HDDs, however the thought of having a portable lab + use laptop for day-to-day work seems more appealing albeit expensive.

    I am quite torn to invest so much money on "oldish" hardware, but I am reaching the point that I need a lab. I could try to put something together at work and VPN in, but really looking for another job at the moment.

    Comments, suggestions, etc are much appreciated

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    Re: My VMware home lab

    The problems I have had with nested labs has been VLANs.

    If your happy with mediocre to poor performance and everything in a single VLAN, a laptop will do the job.
    Main PC: Asus Rampage IV Extreme / 3960X@4.5GHz / Antec H1200 Pro / 32GB DDR3-1866 Quad Channel / Sapphire Fury X / Areca 1680 / 850W EVGA SuperNOVA Gold 2 / Corsair 600T / 2x Dell 3007 / 4 x 250GB SSD + 2 x 80GB SSD / 4 x 1TB HDD (RAID 10) / Windows 10 Pro, Yosemite & Ubuntu
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    Re: My VMware home lab

    Quote Originally Posted by shaithis View Post
    The problems I have had with nested labs has been VLANs.

    If your happy with mediocre to poor performance and everything in a single VLAN, a laptop will do the job.
    Can you not configure appropriate vmnet adapaters on VMware Workstation and present to the hosts (1x mgmt, 1xstorage, 1x VMs, 1x vMotion)

    Then put a VyOS to take care of L3.

    Thanks

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