Practicing VMware at work questions

TechnicalJay

Will this affect anything on the network at work? I'm wanting to install a trial copy of Server 2012 and ESXI 6.0 and maybe one with Linux. Am I free to play around with it as I please? I don't want the network to go down or anything!

thanks

Lexluethar

Honestly if you have to ask that question you should not be configuring or installing that on your work network.

Two reasons, one being you don't know your company policy and no one on this forum would know. That's something only your manager can answer.

Second reason is you don't have enough knowledge of your current infrastructure to know the ramifications, this isn't a bad thing but if you don't know the consequences I would NOT be configuring that on your work network.

Okay, with the above disclaimer, if you configure vCenter on an isolated network partition you won't have any issues. We run a medium size vCenter infrastructure at my work but we don't have a dev environment so I installed ESXi and vCenter on an isolated Host server that only I have access to from a segmented switch in my office.

Will just installing Server or ESXi 6.0 break anything - no. But if you incorrectly give it an IP, incorrectly configure a port group or uplink that hits the network and you have IP overlaps or start doing a storage vmotion across a management port you might be updating your resume sooner than you had hoped.

TechnicalJay

Lexluethar wrote: »

Honestly if you have to ask that question you should not be configuring or installing that on your work network.

Two reasons, one being you don't know your company policy and no one on this forum would know. That's something only your manager can answer.

Second reason is you don't have enough knowledge of your current infrastructure to know the ramifications, this isn't a bad thing but if you don't know the consequences I would NOT be configuring that on your work network.

Okay, with the above disclaimer, if you configure vCenter on an isolated network partition you won't have any issues. We run a medium size vCenter infrastructure at my work but we don't have a dev environment so I installed ESXi and vCenter on an isolated Host server that only I have access to from a segmented switch in my office.

Will just installing Server or ESXi 6.0 break anything - no. But if you incorrectly give it an IP, incorrectly configure a port group or uplink that hits the network and you have IP overlaps or start doing a storage vmotion across a management port you might be updating your resume sooner than you had hoped.

Thanks for the reply.

The only reason I ask about doing this at work is because my laptop has a realtek card which isn't compatible with ESXI 6.0. I don't have a lot of money to buy another computer. Would Virtual box be worth looking into?

kj0

If that is your only reason for not using your Laptop, you can do some googling and will find the ESXi Customizer and the recreated driver that you can use the ESXi Customizer to import.

Don't use your Production environment. I use to, but I knew the environment extremely well and had everything whiteboarded and checked with co-workers.

markulous

You can completely isolate it from your company's network, which is what I'd recommend, however best practice would be just to ask your manager and/or the admins there. That way you know you're good.

TheFORCE

Do not do it at your work, it's that simple.

anhtran35

Do not do it at work.