Ghetto Home-based vCenter Appliance

DeathmageDeathmage Banned Posts: 2,496
in Virtualization
Hi guys,

As some of you guys know I have a Dual R610 cluster at home and I'm using a old HP Procurve 2848 switch as the iSCSI [it supports Jumbo Frames](for QNAP TS-420 NAS)and vMotion switch but for vCenter I was curious how I'd go about using vCenter for the cluster.

Can I use vCenter in the ESXi cluster on one of the VM's or could I use say a brand-new Optiplex 9010 (Intel i7, 16 GB of RAM, Dual Broadcom Giga nic's) desktop as a ghetto vCenter appliance? ....If I can use the Optiplex 9010 as an appliance could someone explain or provide a link on how to go about setting this sucker up?

As some info this 9010 was used in the past as my sole esxi 5.1 server; on one partition is Windows Server 2008 R2 and on another partition is Windows 7; and on the last partition is esxi 5.1.

Any help would be appreciated.
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  • BloogenBloogen Member Posts: 180 ■■■□□□□□□□
    I would make the vCenter a VM on the existing Dell server ESXi hosts. That saves you from additional hardware resources and is actually a best practice from an HA perspective.
    NeilBryan.ca
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  • DeathmageDeathmage Banned Posts: 2,496
    Bloogen wrote: »
    I would make the vCenter a VM on the existing Dell server ESXi hosts. That saves you from additional hardware resources and is actually a best practice from an HA perspective.

    So I would just spin up another VM and install vCener directly onto the VM? ....I presume the vCenter.iso can be installed on the VM just like I would install say Server 2008 R2?
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  • BloogenBloogen Member Posts: 180 ■■■□□□□□□□
    Exactly. You first install Server 2012 R2 (5.5 Build 1+) or 2008 R2 VM and install vCenter on it.

    Or, you can deploy the vCenter Appliance to one of the hosts using the vSphere client, instead of the Windows based VM.
    NeilBryan.ca
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  • DeathmageDeathmage Banned Posts: 2,496
    Bloogen wrote: »
    Exactly. You first install Server 2012 R2 (5.5 Build 1+) or 2008 R2 VM and install vCenter on it.

    Or, you can deploy the vCenter Appliance to one of the hosts using the vSphere client, instead of the Windows based VM.

    Well let me go and try both of these scenario's and see what they do. If I have problems, I'll just come back here to this post.

    Thanks for the clarification. icon_thumright.gif
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  • jibbajabbajibbajabba Member Posts: 4,317 ■■■■■■■■□□
    This is what most people do. I even do it with a single host used by nested VMs.

    Create a vCenter VM, add the host it is hosted on to it and create virtual hosts / clusters.
    My own knowledge base made public: http://open902.com :p
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  • DeathmageDeathmage Banned Posts: 2,496
    Thanks guys! - this helps me out quite a bit.
    jibbajabba wrote: »
    This is what most people do. I even do it with a single host used by nested VMs.

    Create a vCenter VM, add the host it is hosted on to it and create virtual hosts / clusters.

    BTW - great website, very helpful Mike.
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  • DeathmageDeathmage Banned Posts: 2,496
    Finally after a bit of trial and error finally got it done....

    Thanks for the help!!!!

    Also spent like 3 hours setting up a Raspberry PI I had in the closet as a physical DNS server for the ESXi cluster's network. I always like having a physical DNS server on-top of the virtual one....

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  • datacombossdatacomboss Member Posts: 304 ■■■□□□□□□□
    Deathmage wrote: »
    Hi guys,

    As some of you guys know I have a Dual R610 cluster at home and I'm using a old HP Procurve 2848 switch as the iSCSI [it supports Jumbo Frames](for QNAP TS-420 NAS)and vMotion switch but for vCenter I was curious how I'd go about using vCenter for the cluster.

    Can I use vCenter in the ESXi cluster on one of the VM's or could I use say a brand-new Optiplex 9010 (Intel i7, 16 GB of RAM, Dual Broadcom Giga nic's) desktop as a ghetto vCenter appliance? ....If I can use the Optiplex 9010 as an appliance could someone explain or provide a link on how to go about setting this sucker up?

    As some info this 9010 was used in the past as my sole esxi 5.1 server; on one partition is Windows Server 2008 R2 and on another partition is Windows 7; and on the last partition is esxi 5.1.

    Any help would be appreciated.

    IDK if you'd see a vCenter appliance in the "ghetto".
    "If I were to say, 'God, why me?' about the bad things, then I should have said, 'God, why me?' about the good things that happened in my life."

    Arthur Ashe

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  • jibbajabbajibbajabba Member Posts: 4,317 ■■■■■■■■□□
    datacomboss wrote: »
    IDK if you'd see a vCenter appliance in the "ghetto".

    You do, once you worked for a big VMware partner, small companies do feel like a vGhetto (great domain potential thinking about it).
    My own knowledge base made public: http://open902.com :p
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  • jibbajabbajibbajabba Member Posts: 4,317 ■■■■■■■■□□
    Deathmage wrote: »
    Thanks guys! - this helps me out quite a bit.



    BTW - great website, very helpful Mike.

    Very kind - thank you :D
    My own knowledge base made public: http://open902.com :p
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  • datacombossdatacomboss Member Posts: 304 ■■■□□□□□□□
    jibbajabba wrote: »
    You do, once you worked for a big VMware partner, small companies do feel like a vGhetto (great domain potential thinking about it).

    lol! icon_twisted.gif
    "If I were to say, 'God, why me?' about the bad things, then I should have said, 'God, why me?' about the good things that happened in my life."

    Arthur Ashe

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  • DeathmageDeathmage Banned Posts: 2,496
    Because I can.... after talking with the vExpert at work and told me how to setup the 9010 as a vCenter Appliance I realized it's relatively easy.

    So I'm cruising away at getting this sucker setup with the 4 Nics it has from the two Broadcom Dualies (add-in cards I dropped into it) and installing 2008 R2 on it and copying over the vCenter iso and SQL Express installer.

    ...Now that I know what I did last night should make the process so much faster....

    ......goal is to have an Appliance and the Virtual vCenter on the cluster itself and weigh in the Pro's and Con's of both....
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  • datacombossdatacomboss Member Posts: 304 ■■■□□□□□□□
    You should virtualize it and play around with HA.
    "If I were to say, 'God, why me?' about the bad things, then I should have said, 'God, why me?' about the good things that happened in my life."

    Arthur Ashe

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  • DeathmageDeathmage Banned Posts: 2,496
    datacomboss wrote: »
    You should virtualize it and play around with HA.

    it's already virtualized on one host..... and dam you now you gave me another idea!!!!!! icon_thumright.gif
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  • DeathmageDeathmage Banned Posts: 2,496
    Now if only I could figure out how to open the vCenter VM which has static IP on my 192.225.225.0/27 network from my desktop with the vSphere Client directly into the VM without having to 1st connect to the 2008 R2 VM that has vCenter installed within it that would make my life easier....

    ...Right now I can access vCenter with localhost locally on the VM but I'd like to resolve by name from my laptop over wireless or from the production network (routing is already done so I can access it from all my vlans)....which is vCenter1.[mydomain].com - The host is a Optiplex 9010 desktop which is setup as a ESXi 5.1 host inside of that is one VM with Server 2008 R2 installed on it, within that is the vCenter installation; I'd again just like to access the vCenter directly.

    I gave it a static IP in DNS on the the Physical and Virtual DC's that are apart of my domain (bought a domain from Godaddy.com) and moved the SOA NS to my Raspberry PI that is my primary physical "ultra-lightweight" DC (has LDAP lite on it with DNS) over my static 101mbit cable. :)

    I know my home-network is super overkill; but I learn more with this lab since it's my own and I can break it. :P

    There has to be a way....

    Update: Appliance on physical host separate from cluster; finished. Now to get the above item figured out I'd be golden!!!!

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  • BloogenBloogen Member Posts: 180 ■■■□□□□□□□
    Be careful with your use of the word 'appliance' when discussing vCenter. There is the vCenter server you install onto a Windows Server and then there is a vCenter Appliance (vCSA) which is a virtual appliance which is deployed as an ovf file. It's a bit unclear in the way you are using the term.

    Keep up the labbing.
    NeilBryan.ca
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  • DeathmageDeathmage Banned Posts: 2,496
    The suspense is killing me....



    got another Raspberry PI installing atm for a Media Center PI for my living room that will be tied into this QNAP TS-420 over the home backbone so I can stream my torrented movies to the 70 inch plasma.....

    So now I got two items "prepping" .... the suspense!!!!

    Below is some updated pictures of my lab....

    ...HP 2848 is the vMotion and iSCSI switch ONLY with Jumbo Frames enable on the iSCSI vlan...







    Also Here is a link to my PC, I actually won it back in 2011 from Tom's Hardware. :)

    System Builder Marathon, June 2011: $2000 Performance PC - A True Enthusiast Build?
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