VI3 in a Box (Home Lab)

homerj742

This is a pretty cool/cheap way to setup a home lab. Basically running ESX inside of Vmware Workstation. Using Open Filer as iSCSI storage.

http://knowledge.xtravirt.com/white-papers/esx-3x.html

I plan on following this once I upgrade my cpu's memory from 2 to 4 GB. It'll be a good way to test things out until I can afford to (and have physical space for) additional hardware.

I hope this helps me in my quest for VCP.

Heck, either way, it will be fun!

dales

Must say im really impressed with openfiler, its a great little distro and there are some good tutorials for getting esxi and openfiler working together for those of us who have not used iscsi much.

techhead blog post is one of note.

jibbajabba

Thanks for the link .. nice whitepaper there ....

stupidboy

Did anyone get this working? I have setup as per the doc, however, it never fully boots (even after 3 hours).

I last tried on a dual core 2.8Ghz with 4GB RAM and VMware Workstation 6.5

astorrs

stupidboy wrote:

Did anyone get this working? I have setup as per the doc, however, it never fully boots (even after 3 hours).

I last tried on a dual core 2.8Ghz with 4GB RAM and VMware Workstation 6.5

Do you have VT enabled in the BIOS (enable NX as well if there is the option)?

TechJunky

What true benefits do you even get from running ESX within vmware? I understand if you just want to learn ESX this is fine, but your not getting a true environment. VMWare Server basically does the same thing for learning purposes.

Agreed on Openfiler. I have some old HP Servers I am using as SAN Servers.

dynamik

stupidboy wrote:

Did anyone get this working? I have setup as per the doc, however, it never fully boots (even after 3 hours).

I last tried on a dual core 2.8Ghz with 4GB RAM and VMware Workstation 6.5

I made all these edits to the VMX and it works fine for me

guestOS = "other"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
monitor.virtual_exec = "hardware"
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "true"

http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/470-ESX-3.5-is-running-on-Workstation-6.5-Build-91182-!!!.html

It looks like that PDF didn't include all of those. I'm not sure if that'll make a difference for you or not. As Astorrs noted, your processor and its settings will play a huge role in performance. And sadly, my BIOS doesn't allow me to enable the NX bit, so I'm working fine without that. No Hyper-V though

TechJunky wrote:

What true benefits do you even get from running ESX within vmware? I understand if you just want to learn ESX this is fine, but your not getting a true environment. VMWare Server basically does the same thing for learning purposes.

A portable lab/demonstration environment. I have two ESX servers and FreeNAS (just using NFS) on my laptop. I can create clusters, perform vmotion, etc. It's very convenient. The purpose is to learn and work with ESX, not actually use the VMs like you would with Server.

homerj742

dynamik wrote:

TechJunky wrote:

What true benefits do you even get from running ESX within vmware? I understand if you just want to learn ESX this is fine, but your not getting a true environment. VMWare Server basically does the same thing for learning purposes.

A portable lab/demonstration environment. I have two ESX servers and FreeNAS (just using NFS) on my laptop. I can create clusters, perform vmotion, etc. It's very convenient. The purpose is to learn and work with ESX, not actually use the VMs like you would with Server.

Agreed, as much as I would prefer to have a lab with actual hardware, this is a great alternative, and very convenient.

Dynamik, what OS do you use for the "nested VM's"?

dynamik

Just a few Server 2003 VMs at the moment. They're really draining my resources though, so I'll probably switch over to light, CLI Linux VMs when I want to get more going.

homerj742

dynamik wrote:

Just a few Server 2003 VMs at the moment. They're really draining my resources though, so I'll probably switch over to light, CLI Linux VMs when I want to get more going.

Good call, I might try that rather than Windows OS's. I just want to be able to practice things like Vmotion and so forth.

Thanks!

mrx9000

Does anyone happen to know if this will work with the current Workstaion:

VMware Workstation 6.5.1-126130

The Beta seems to be hard to source....

Thanks

RTmarc

It does. I've been playing around with it a little for the past few weeks.

homerj742

I look forward to adding another ESX host. Currently I have 2GB of RAM, once I get it up to 4 I will have a full no virtualization lab!