Building a lab..advice please

earweed

I'm trying to build a home lab for studying for my MCITP:EA. It's not really necessary but something I want to do. I wanted some advice on how I should arrange the components. It's nothing really fancy, a trendnet wireless router, Liunksys switch and a few extra old PC's hooked in along with the 3 PC's I already have.
I kind of only have 2 options on how to hook it up. Both will require running cat5e the length of the house or running a phone line to my office.

Modem ---Router---switch----PC's Option 1
******** |
***** PC(wireless)

Modem----Switch----Router--PC(wireless) Option 2
* ********|
* *******PC's
Ignore the asteriscs

Option 1 would require running cat 5e cable. Option 2 would require running extra phone line (or having 5c's in living room, not an option). I already have enough cat5e cable here to run that.

Any ideas

HeroPsycho

The old PC's are costing you money in energy costs and are not as flexible for learning as virtualization. Dude, if you have no money, use VMware Player or VirtualPC, or if you have money, pick up a copy of VMware Workstation. Gives you networking options without cobbling a bunch of that kind of gear together, portability to new hardware, snapshots, etc. etc.

earweed

Already doing that now. I'm doing this mostly for some actual "hands on" with what I have on hand. The extra pc's would only be powered on occasionally when I need ,or just want, more than 3 servers to practice on.

HeroPsycho

Help me to understand what "actual hands on" you're getting with the three physical boxes you can't get in a virtual environment. Might help in suggesting a network topology.

Edit: why not sell the 3 and upgrade your main computer to have resources to run more VMs? Or, sell the three, and build a dedicated ESXi box on the cheap.

earweed

My current computer is maxed out. It's old too.
I've had the three up for sale for some time now. They're gathering dust. Care to buy an old PC?

HeroPsycho

Well, unless you're gonna turn one compy into a NAT device, you don't really have a choice...

Modem -> Router -> Switch -> Machines

-Foxer-

I agree with others. VM's are the way to go. It works great, and not only that, most places are either already using some type of hypervisor (like VMware esx server), so you're going to be using that in real-world environments anyway.

Plus if you're a WGU student, which I think you are, you get a copy of VMware workstation for free.

I'd do everything possible to upgrade your computer to handle one or two VM's, and unless it's really old, you could probably just upgrade the RAM.

earweed

Got enough to handle what I need. Just wanted to get some advice on which of these setups would work. I already can VM on VMWare (I can handle 3 servers running at once). I'd just like to "plug a few cables" in once in a while.
I'd also like to see what I could do with more than 3 servers.
I thought the NAT might get me. I probably should have thought of putting that issue in my origional post.
My computer is kind of old. I checked on upgrading it (more memory) but apparently it'll only handle 2GB (according to the manufacturer). Its an HP Pavilion a 1623w.
Until messing with VM's I thought it would suit me fine.

HeroPsycho

This is precisely why I built a dedicated box for ESXi. I knew flat out especially with 64-bit only Microsoft server products that I was gonna need a ton of RAM, and I didn't want to bog down my main machine in the process. You can build a slamming ESXi server that won't cost you nearly as much as you'd think. With ESXi4's better support for SATA cards, I built the following at the time:

Intel Q6600 quadcore CPU $180
Asus Intel P45 chipset mobo with 16GB RAM support $150
8GB DDR2 RAM $60 (good deal!)
2x 640GB WD double platter SATA drives $150
Intel ESXi supported NIC (onboard didn't work) $30
Case $40
600W Power Supply $60

I wasn't trying to build the least expensive box either. You could get buy now spending less.

rsutton

How many VM's can you run on that setup HeroPsycho? And do you bottle neck on CPU or RAM first?

MentholMoose

rsutton wrote: »

How many VM's can you run on that setup HeroPsycho? And do you bottle neck on CPU or RAM first?

On that rig I think the disks will probably bottleneck before CPU or RAM. I have something similar (Q9550, 8GB DDR2, 4x 320GB drives in RAID 10 on an LSI card) and that's what happens on it.

HeroPsycho

rsutton wrote: »

How many VM's can you run on that setup HeroPsycho? And do you bottle neck on CPU or RAM first?

I now have 4x 640GB drives and I spread the VM's between them. (didn't want to spend money on a RAID card) It depends on the VM's I'm running. I can run about 7 64-bit larger machines so long as I'm not slamming the disks. I can run about 10 32-bit machines.

It usually is disk i/o that will kill the performance. RAM is next, then CPU. Keep in mind ESXi helps a lot over Workstation or similar products because there's a smaller host OS footprint, and because it does transparent page sharing (ie memory dedup at page level, so the same operating systems running in different vm's don't take up additional RAM for the OS).

And the good news is I can increase the capacity by adding a compatible RAID card and go to 16GBs of RAM if I'd like down the road.

earweed

HeroPsycho wrote: »

Intel Q6600 quadcore CPU $180
Asus Intel P45 chipset mobo with 16GB RAM support $150
8GB DDR2 RAM $60 (good deal!)
2x 640GB WD double platter SATA drives $150
Intel ESXi supported NIC (onboard didn't work) $30
Case $40
600W Power Supply $60

Thanks for the advice. If I could unload these old computers I'd prob be able to build it now. What did you do, remember the prices or google them like I just did? I found the chip for the same price after getting floored by the Amazon price ($389) and the board was pretty close.

HeroPsycho

I'm going by memory of what I paid. I would not build the same box today. For example, why spend $180 on an Intel Q6600 when you can get a Core i5 or i7 even for around the same price. DDR2 memory is more expensive now than it was when I built the machine, so avoiding DDR3 for cost savings may not be worth it anymore. You could also consider AMD processors to save money. My point was more to illustrate how you can build a nice ESXi server for not that much money, not to build what I built exactly.

Ultimate VMWare ESX Whitebox is a good resource to find compatible hardware for ESXi. Pay particular attention on motherboards to onboard SATA card and NIC card support. When I built mine, in most cases, the onboard SATA card if it worked would not work with RAID enabled, and you were almost assured to need an aftermarket $30 Intel NIC. If you want RAID support, you may choose to disregard whether a motherboard's on board SATA controller was compatible or not if you're gonna buy an aftermarket RAID controller anyway. And don't pay more than $30 more for a motherboard just to have one with a compatible NIC since an aftermarket supported one is only $30.

You get the idea...

earweed

Thanks for the info.
Just for laughs I checked the complete systems and my daughters laptop was on there. Whoever used it must have had more memory installed though. Also the mobo I used to rebuild a friends computer was on the list (not the same processor though) and only cost about $100 online.