Home lab - White box or server

GBAKER2204

Hi, I have been considering studying for some of the more advanced VMware exams (and the Microsoft Private Cloud exams too for that matter) and could do with updating my current lab to facilitate this.

My current lab is based on an AMD A6 quad core chip, and the motherboard can handle up to 16gb of Ram, I used this for my VCP5 (5.0) (nested ESXi on Workstation) back in 2012, so it has done me for a good while (it was the best I could afford at the time).

The recent pluralsight and CBT nuggets videos seem to be suggesting machines with 32/64GB of RAM and approx 8 cores. I have seen other posts suggesting for ESXi v6 that the RAM requirements are that much greater.

I'd like to future proof whatever I get so I don't need to continually upgrade it, and would be looking at servers or motherboards capable of 128GB of RAM or more (so LGA2011 or above seem to be my best bet for a whitebox), and would probably look at doing a single/nested environment again.

Any advice on the best places to look for a decent server (I am in the UK) ? The site mentioned by Jibbajabba in a recent post appears to be offline now.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

OctalDump

Getting a server on the VMWare compatibility list is a shortcut for getting ESXi running on bare metal, since there are (likely) fewer things to patch to get it working. Depending where you are at with your studies/experience getting hands on with real server equipment can be a good idea to get familiar with how things work, gotchas etc.

BUT, servers tend to be noisy, power hungry and more expensive. Personally, I prefer real hardware, since it is real hardware I'll be working with, and it allows me to focus on the practical skills as opposed to learning another tool or fixing problems that (should) never come up in production.

For sourcing, there's eBay and similar. There are also some companies that specialise in computer "recycling" that might sell to general public. And you can also try calling around larger local businesses to see if they are getting rid of any IT equipment - due to the vagaries of tax law, they will often throw away equipment older than 3 or 5 years - so an offer to pick up can get you free or cheap gear.

Somewhere in between these too options, is something like the Mac Pro (an older model), which runs quiet and has server/workstation grade components such as ECC RAM, Xeon CPUs, PCIe slots. Depending on the model, it is also on the VMware compatibility list. Price varies a fair bit, from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand depending on the model, upgrades etc. The 2009/2010/2012 models all take up to 128GB RAM, and have hyper threaded CPUs. The 2010 and 2012 are on the official list. The 2009 is basically the 2010 model with lower spec CPUs, so works anyway.

GBAKER2204

Thank you for your advice. I appreciate the suggestions and hadn't considered a Mac Pro as a possibility.

I have been working (and playing with) virtualization products for over ten years (from ESX 3.0.1 -> ESXi 5.5 at work, VirtualBox (since before Oracle bought it), Virtual PC (before Microsoft bought it), VMware server, then VMware Player and my current lab has Workstation on it), and working in mostly JOAT roles since 2004 (small IT teams managing everything), I am only now in a role where I can think about some degree of specialism.

I did neglect to mention that my current PC also acts as a family PC, so I'd need to factor that in to the equation (as much as I'd like to run bare metal, it's one of the reasons for having a nested environment currently).

eugenechia

Hi, just sharing my journey. I started learning vsphere back in 2012 and i purchased an ASUS windows laptop, had the RAM upgraded to 16GB and a 500GB SSD. I remember clearly the laptop salesperson giving me a puzzled look on why would anyone need so much RAM and I just told him I needed it for a lab. In windows, I run my esxi lab in vmware workstation.

Last year I got myself an iMac for video editing. I upped the RAM to 32GB with 500GB SSD. So continuing my vmware adventure, now I run my lab in 2 machines (just that I have to understand how to run vmware fusion better on the mac). My Mac also runs as a Plex server.

Bottom line is --- you need SSD and RAM for your labs.

I might consider building another box in 2 years if budget allows. (Being a family man and another kid on the way in November 2016, hardly can save any moolah.. lol)

OctalDump

GBAKER2204 wrote: »

I did neglect to mention that my current PC also acts as a family PC, so I'd need to factor that in to the equation (as much as I'd like to run bare metal, it's one of the reasons for having a nested environment currently).

Yeah, that's a reasonable approach then. If it were Hyper-V you'd be able to work around that. :-/

Bottom line is --- you need SSD and RAM for your labs.

Yeah, you can get by without SSD, and you can get by with 'a little RAM' (8GB), but it's easier if you have both.

One way to economise with RAM (and CPU and Disk) when labbing/learning ESXi is to use very low footprint guest OSes (win2k3, or a minimal linux). Since, you are more concerned about learning the Hypervisor, the guest OS's aren't that important.