VCP Homelab Plan

cmorris14

I'm currently setting up a homelab that I plan to use to study for the VCP as well as additional certifications in the future.

My current plans are:
MB: SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SRA-F-O ATX Server Motherboard Single Socket R3 (LGA 2011) Intel C612
CPU: E5-2670v3 (from work)
RAM: 32GB (to start)
Storage: 4x4TB drives in an existing NAS, I was thinking about a local SSD as well, but not really sure about what I would want as far as space and enterprise vs consumer

I'm planning on running several VMs on the frame itself for my home network as well as additional VMs in nested ESXi for the lab.

Thoughts?

tbgree00

I have a Dell T110 with 16 GB ram running Autolab nested and it was sufficient for almost everything I needed for my DCA. That rig will be much better and you shouldn't have a problem doing VCP labs there.

CSCOnoob

That's a monster in my opinion! Should be able to do a lot of virtualization with that gear!

My only complaint about NAS with Reds or something similar is that it's too slow, at least for me. Having SSD in the NAS greatly improves the VM performance but it can get expensive. Obviously, having SSD locally is way better but my complaint there is the VM backups. Sure, one could set up a Veeam to back it up but it's another VM or physical machine to do that job. With NAS, all you need is external drive or cloud to back it up. Then again, if it's for lab only and no production VMs used for home purposes then should be fine. The vSphere Flash Read Cache may also improve VM performance as well but can't say for sure yet since I haven't tried it yet.

jibbajabba

You likely run out of IO before you run out of RAM .. REALLY get an SSD for your VMs ...