Does anyone here run a nested virtualisation lab at home on a single host? I am in the process of trying to set up a fully legal (trials are great!) and fully working ESXi 5.5 nested lab on my PC. So far, I have managed to get most things up and running by following a really good and in depth guide, but it focuses on 5.1 and my trials are for 5.5 (the only real difference so far has been the installation of vCenter now that it needs Single Sign On/Web Client/Inventory Service, it's totally different and I am struggling to get it working).
The major thing with vCenter that concerns me though is that I have it running on a VM in Workstation, rather than a VM inside the Hypervisor (this is how my previous company had it set up) and it had to install with 4GB of RAM. I only have 8GB of RAM normally, however I managed to borrow another 4GB from a friend, so vCenter is using 1/3rd of my total RAM. Is there anything I can do about this or is it necessary due to it being the "centre" of all things v.
The guide also mentioned setting up DC and SQL servers, I set them up with 2GB each to make them easier to set up and plan to drop them to 1GB each once complete. This leaves about ~4GB free for the Hypervisors (I really want two, what's the point otherwise as this is for testing and playing around with HA/DRS/FT etc).
The real question is, with only 12GB of RAM (~10.5GB available after taking into account the host Windows 7 using a bit) what do you think the ideal set up for a nested lab should be? Should I forgo the DC and SQL server and have them all on one, along with vCenter? Should I just set up two 5GB Hypervisors with everything running inside them?
If you run a nested lab, what is your set up and how did you install it all? Do you know of any guides for 5.5?
Also, has anyone heard of Autolab (http://www.labguides.com/autolab/) and have you used it? Is it any good and will it help me, or will it take away valuable learning experience? Sadly, it's not for 5.5 but still worth a play about with I guess.


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