Setting up a learning lab at home for <$$

I want to set up a lab at home for my MCITP-EA. I have a PC which I could use (was my Win Home Server), but it's only got a Celeron D and 1 Gb memory (DDR2 4300). I want to put vSphere ESXi on it, and a handful of 2K8 servers. I have 4x SATA drives so I will put a VM on each drive to keep IO speed up.

Questions:
1. How much memory should I get? The current mobo only goes up to 4Gb but I wonder if thin provisioning will help here. I don't want to replace the mobo if I don't have to, there is no point spending money on it when I'll stop using it after my exams.
2. Is a Celeron D sufficient for a lightly loaded vSphere server?
3. Should I consider using Hyper-V, seeing as I'm tryingto get my head around MS's products?
4. Any other considerations?

Thanks in advance

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Comments

Fugazi1000

Forget Hyper-V and vSphere - they won't work on a Celeron D as they need 64 bit and virtualisation support.

Don't worry about multiple SATA drives - they won't be your bottleneck.

Get 4GB of RAM. 1GB will never work.

If you just need the minimum W2K8 machines (not R2) that the MCITP:EA book refers to - you 'might' just get away with that machine. It will be sluggish - but I suspect all the labs will work.

I would get Win XP SP3 running on the machine and then run Sun VirtualBox. The XP memory footprint is smaller and it's stable.

Having said all that - I would opt for a new machine. HP ProLiant Microserver. You might find it with cashback. 8GB of RAM, dual core AMD Athlon II Neo (64 bit and supports virtualisation) in a quiet and small formfactor. A great LABbing box for the money.

Jonski

Hmmm. I re-read the mobo manual (RTFM!) and see that although the PG5-MX supports 2Gb sticks, it also only supports 2Gb max, not 2x2Gb as I assumed. So I'm up for a mobo replacememnt.

The CPU is a Celeron D 420, (List of Intel Celeron microprocessors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) which is 64-bit and 1.6Ghz but without the VT-x extensions (not the end of the world). I think I'll re-use it if possible. My lab doesn't need to be screamingly fast as it's all proof of concept and I'll be muddling along slowly while I learn. I don't care if it takes 2s for a transaction which might take a 1/2s in the real world and I can't see me even remotely stress-testing a virtual server in any way.

I don't think VMware demands virtualisation support, it's just a nice-to-have? Can anybody confirm this?

As I said, I want to spend as little as possible because I will have no use for the rig after finishing my exams. Also, I'm trying to get my hands on and old HP ML110 or similar but I'd also need to beef up the memory is my guess, and perhaps even the CPU which might see me spending the same $$ in the end. Sigh.

MentholMoose

Jonski wrote: »

I don't think VMware demands virtualisation support, it's just a nice-to-have? Can anybody confirm this?

Up to ESX/ESXi 4.1, Intel VT or AMD-V is only required to run 64-bit VMs. You can run 32-bit VMs just fine, but for studying MCITP: SA and EA you will need some experience with Server 2008 R2, which is only available for 64-bit CPUs.

Jonski

Well I've settled on a Asus P5P43TD Pro, on order, with 8Gb DDR3. I'll try the Celeron D 420 and if it's not doing the job I'll get a better CPU. Now just waiting on the motherboard to arrive...

MentholMoose

You may run into trouble if you don't have a supported NIC. Without one, the ESXi install will fail. The onboard NICs (typically from Marvell, VIA, or Realtek) for most desktop-class motherboards aren't supported, so you should pick up a cheap Intel or Broadcom NIC.

jibbajabba

MentholMoose wrote: »

You may run into trouble if you don't have a supported NIC. Without one, the ESXi install will fail. The onboard NICs (typically from Marvell, VIA, or Realtek) for most desktop-class motherboards aren't supported, so you should pick up a cheap Intel or Broadcom NIC.

Was just thinking that ... Board has a "Atholes L1E" - I have never even heard that make before...

I would bet the install will fail ..

demonfurbie

you can get a cheap amd64 cpu and mb combo 4 gig or more ram is a must for setting up vms

i would install linux as the base and load vms from there