VMware Hardware

Am I hopeless? I just upgraded my CPU to a Core 2 Quad Q9550 as I was trying to save money rather than doing a rebuild. I should also mention that I had to replace the motherboard for it as well as I had an accident with the first installation, which wasn't pretty.

I ran ESXi in Virtualbox on top of my Windows 7 64-bit host. Apparently, it threw me a warning message when I was installing it. It said I lacked the ability to do hardware virtualization.

So I did some searching around, and then it came to my attention that I also needed the Intel's EPT (Extended Page Table) support for second-level address translation, so that I can run nested VMs, especially the 64-bit ones. I was rather disappointed that the virtualization community didn't stress the importance of the EPT feature as equally as VT-x and VT-d.

So, can someone recommends a really cheap set up for vSphere 5.5? I don't mind building a new system or buying a used system. Someone mentioned a Dell Precision T5500. Is it totally worth it or are there other cheaper alternatives such as renting? Can I still do away with my current set up with only 8 GB of RAM?

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Comments

gbdavidx

I am trying to follow this lab guide once i get a couple grand

ESXi 5 Home Lab Specs | Home Server Blog

bermovick

I looked for a good month trying to find something "cheap". The best I could get was a T5500 from some eBay retailer I emailed directly for a quote. $450 for a quad-core box with 32G ram, or 500 for a hex-core. I'm thinking 32 will cover everything we'll use it for (as long as we don't try using everything at once). If you want/don't mind a rack server you can get a good one for about the same price (look for DL160, but be sure it's a Gen 6).

Finally the guy in the CBT videos runs everything in vmware workstation (nesting ESX inside that), and says his box with 16G can (barely) run it -- he later moves to a 32G box to make things easier, but it sounds like for labbing/studies a 16G box would be enough, provided your guests have small footprints; he was using DSL for them.

dave330i

For VCP level lab, you don't have to build a home lab. VMware's Hands on Lab works well.

SamMerlotte

Dave, what type of minimum hardware would you recommend for a VCAP5-DCA lab?

hiddenknight821

bermovick wrote: »

The best I could get was a T5500 from some eBay retailer I emailed directly for a quote. $450 for a quad-core box with 32G ram, or 500 for a hex-core.

Is that so? Because that deal is a steal! I'd definitely get it if it's just $500. I was looking around for a 2-quad-core box with 32 GB on Ebay. I see that most of them are quoted around $800. Although, I've been toying with the idea of buying a couple of 4GB 1333 Mhz DDR3 PC3-10660 ECC Registered DIMMs (not sure what T5500 accepts though), doing a mix and match while buying a 2 quad-core box with low RAM spec. I see the low-spec boxes are being sold for a lot less. As far as I know, the T5500 has 6 RAM slots with 3 additional slots on the riser card.

I'd prefer creating nested ESXi guests in VMware/VirtualBox for several reasons:
1. I can easily reverse to previous snapshot in case I screw up.
2. I can save electricity by putting my system to sleep rather than running it constantly while I'm away.
3. I don't have to reinstall each time after the 60-day trial expiration as I can just simply go back to one of the snapshot restoration points.

What you think?

dave330i

SamMerlotte wrote: »

Dave, what type of minimum hardware would you recommend for a VCAP5-DCA lab?

I had an Intel i7 with 16GB and ~100GB of SSD to support VMware Workstation. You don't need much for DCA lab. Check out the Autolab: vSphere 5 AutoLab. I didn't want to deal with building my VMs, so I used theirs.