Home Lab 9 (noob)

mattrgee

Hi guys,

Im taking the Install and Configure course in June and have started reading the Exam Cram VCP-310 to give me a heads up prior to the course, I currently look after a couple of hypervisors at work running ESXi.

I would like to start putting together a lab, but after reading a couple of relevant threads I'm still no wiser as to what equipment will be required to cover the exam objectives. Is there a minimum number of servers I will need? Do I need multiple physical machines or can everything be virtualised? What is your lab made up of?

Thanks.

dynamik

Just take a look at the HCL for ESX. You can find some old systems on eBay for $100-200 each. I got a pair of HP DL360 G3s and setup OpenFiler on my HTPC for iSCSI and Vmotion, etc.

You can get a trials of the full-blown software, which is what you're going to want to practice with.

Andretii

Two months of study seems very short experience to take the exam and get the best out of this certification. A paper VCP would mainly do P2V conversions since there is not experience to manage ESX server farms.

mattrgee

@Andretii: I wouldn't be here asking for lab recommendations if I intended on becoming a paper VCP.

JDMurray

Andretii wrote: »

Two months of study seems very short experience to take the exam and get the best out of this certification. A paper VCP would mainly do P2V conversions since there is not experience to manage ESX server farms.

Who said anything about taking the VCP on VI3 exam after only two months of study?"

mattrgee wrote: »

@Andretii: I wouldn't be here asking for lab recommendations if I intended on becoming a paper VCP.

I really don't understand what this means. It sounds vaguely like a threat. Unless required to demonstrate hands-on skill, or verify actual work experience, all certifications are "paper."

HeroPsycho

Andretii wrote: »

Two months of study seems very short experience to take the exam and get the best out of this certification. A paper VCP would mainly do P2V conversions since there is not experience to manage ESX server farms.

I took the exam after two months of studying, and I assure you I'm not a paper VCP.

tiersten

I used two HP ML115s as ESX cluster nodes and another ML115 to act as a NFS/iSCSI SAN. I added a quad port Intel GigE PCIe card into each and expanded the memory. The built in SATA controllers needed a minor change to the PCI config database for ESX to work though.

jibbajabba

mattrgee wrote: »

@Andretii: I wouldn't be here asking for lab recommendations if I intended on becoming a paper VCP.

No need to get "snappy" - we just try to help. Believe me one thing (being a VCP myself) - "just" running through some labs and the course won't get you the VCP - you MAY pass JUST .. vmware makes sure that people have experience prior passing the exam. In order to test this, you might get specific questions which can only be answered when you have worked with the product or you have studied ALL the PDFs (well apart from the HCL obviously) from cover to cover.

Make sure you really read every single page of those PDFs found here :

VMware Infrastructure 3 Documentation

It won't be easy in such a short period of time but good luck.

mattrgee

Who said anything about taking the exam in 2 months?

I'm just looking for some lab recommendations at the moment so I can cut my teeth on the product prior to the training course.

HeroPsycho

Gomjaba wrote: »

No need to get "snappy"...

I felt his pain...