NAS for home lab use

EruMais

Hey guys,

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as far as what to use for NAS in my home lab. I'm trying to save as much money as possible, yet I do not want to limit myself as far as being able to test some advanced features of VMware. My main goal is to achieve MCITP SA and probably EA beyond that, however I'm very interested in virtualization and so I do not want to limit myself as far as being able to sufficiently lab to obtain VCP or what have you.

I was going to build a Xeon box, but again, my priority is for MCITP studies and doing it relatively cheap.

I'm sure everyone would say that it's best to be able to test everything, especially if you are looking to become certified in VMware, but is it possible to experiment and do lab type work just using one physical server and a NAS? Can you test this using a virtual NAS?

I have Workstation 7.1 currently and understand it's better to run ESXi for labbing and experience in working with VMware, but can you test vMotion and such in a virtual ESX environment?

Appreciate the help.

meadIT

Check out the Uber Celerra VSA from EMC. It's a free virtual SAN for non-production. It is managed using Unisphere and can present NFS, iSCSI, and CIFS targets. It can also do replication if you set up two of them.

If you're looking to set up a complete lab fully in workstation, you would have the following running in workstation:

1) vCenter (since 64 bit is required)
2) ESXi hosts
3) ESX hosts
4) VSAs

You can then run your lab VMs under the virtualized ESXi and ESX hosts.

EruMais

meadIT wrote: »

Check out the Uber Celerra VSA from EMC. It's a free virtual SAN for non-production. It is managed using Unisphere and can present NFS, iSCSI, and CIFS targets. It can also do replication if you set up two of them.

If you're looking to set up a complete lab fully in workstation, you would have the following running in workstation:

1) vCenter (since 64 bit is required)
2) ESXi hosts
3) ESX hosts
4) VSAs

You can then run your lab VMs under the virtualized ESXi and ESX hosts.

Do you think Workstation is sufficient experience to obtain something like a VCP? I realize that the class is still required in that case. I'm still planning on building a dedicated ESXi box, but I don't really have the funds for a physical NAS at this time. If Workstation is robust enough for prepping to VCP, then that is even better.

Here's my current situation... the PC I'm running on now is a q9550 with EP45-UD3P mobo (both cited as ESXi 4.0 compatible) and 4GB RAM. I have a laptop with a dual core i5 and 8 GB RAM (maxed out). I'm looking to then build a compatible AMD box because it's cheap, or, possibly a Xeon box to future proof my virtual studies. I don't really have the funds to purchase a physical NAS in addition. So.. would it be better to upgrade my PC to something like a Sandy Bridge build with 16 GB RAM and just use the laptop/PC in conjunction for Workstation 7.1 virtual testing? Or, would it still be better to build a dedicated ESXi host?

I was also considering taking my current PC hardware and making that into a server, however upgrading to 16 GB in DDR2 is butt expensive now and replacing my PC in addition is not cost-effective.

meadIT

I can't think of anything that you wouldn't be able to test for the VCP using workstation on a laptop (except for Fibre Channel storage). The drawback is going to be lower performance than a standalone ESXi server, but that all depends on how many guests you want running at one time. You'll also be limited to 32 bit guests running under the virtual ESX(i) hosts, which is why you'll need to run vCenter directly under workstation instead of under one of the virtual ESX(i) servers.

If you decide to just build the dedicated ESXi box, you can also run the VSA under that. You'd still need to run virtual instances of ESX(i) on the dedicated box to test out vMotion.

I'm getting ready to upgrade my i7 laptop to 8 GB RAM and am planning to do all of my VCAP-DCA studies in that environment.

EruMais

meadIT wrote: »

I can't think of anything that you wouldn't be able to test for the VCP using workstation on a laptop (except for Fibre Channel storage). The drawback is going to be lower performance than a standalone ESXi server, but that all depends on how many guests you want running at one time. You'll also be limited to 32 bit guests running under the virtual ESX(i) hosts, which is why you'll need to run vCenter directly under workstation instead of under one of the virtual ESX(i) servers.

If you decide to just build the dedicated ESXi box, you can also run the VSA under that. You'd still need to run virtual instances of ESX(i) on the dedicated box to test out vMotion.

I'm getting ready to upgrade my i7 laptop to 8 GB RAM and am planning to do all of my VCAP-DCA studies in that environment.

Awesome. Thanks for your advice, and good luck on your studies!

nhan.ng

how much is your budget? I've recently put together a storage box with the follow parts.

These are the parts i used:

MSI S785GTM-E45 + AMD PHENOM II X4 840 for $100 buck at Microcenter

raid card + 2 cables
LSI 9211-8i Amazon.com: SAS9211-8I 8PORT Int 6GB Sata+sas Pcie 2.0: Electronics

8 samsung drives for storage. I boot off of an old Corsair 32gb SSD drive : Amazon.com: Samsung 1 TB Spinpoint 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.5 inch Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive HD103SJ: Electronics

2 dual ports intel NIC in my other thread,

1 mATX lian li case
Newegg.com - LIAN LI PC-V354R Red Aluminum MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case

I benched OpenIndiana _ napp-it and my speed was at 900/read 500/write. I'm currently running Openfiler 2.99 and it's working pretty well so far. Let me know if you have any question.

the only thing missing in my lab right now is a managed switch. Next paycheck i hope

QHalo

Not a bad little setup. I bought a QNAP 459 Pro II and eventually I'm going to build another array just for grins and more fun playing around with stuff, and then I ran across this as well and it looks interesting.

OpenFiler as Fiber Channel Target

MentholMoose

meadIT wrote: »

I can't think of anything that you wouldn't be able to test for the VCP using workstation on a laptop (except for Fibre Channel storage). The drawback is going to be lower performance than a standalone ESXi server, but that all depends on how many guests you want running at one time. You'll also be limited to 32 bit guests running under the virtual ESX(i) hosts, which is why you'll need to run vCenter directly under workstation instead of under one of the virtual ESX(i) servers.

VDR is covered on the VCP, but you won't be able to run it on a virtual ESX/ESXi 4.1 host since it's 64-bit. I think it needs to run on an ESX/ESXi host in a cluster rather than outside of it like you can do with vCenter.

meadIT

MentholMoose wrote: »

VDR is covered on the VCP, but you won't be able to run it on a virtual ESX/ESXi 4.1 host since it's 64-bit. I think it needs to run on an ESX/ESXi host in a cluster rather than outside of it like you can do with vCenter.

You're correct. I didn't think about VDR. Although you could run the 1.0 version which is available in 32 bit. They went to 64 bit in version 1.1.

dave330i

Don't need a physical NAS. Check out Starwind or Openfiler for iSCSI solution. Starwind has a free trial version and Openfiler is free.

VancouverTechie

EruMais wrote: »

Do you think Workstation is sufficient experience to obtain something like a VCP? I realize that the class is still required in that case. I'm still planning on building a dedicated ESXi box, but I don't really have the funds for a physical NAS at this time. If Workstation is robust enough for prepping to VCP, then that is even better.

Here's my current situation... the PC I'm running on now is a q9550 with EP45-UD3P mobo (both cited as ESXi 4.0 compatible) and 4GB RAM. I have a laptop with a dual core i5 and 8 GB RAM (maxed out). I'm looking to then build a compatible AMD box because it's cheap, or, possibly a Xeon box to future proof my virtual studies. I don't really have the funds to purchase a physical NAS in addition. So.. would it be better to upgrade my PC to something like a Sandy Bridge build with 16 GB RAM and just use the laptop/PC in conjunction for Workstation 7.1 virtual testing? Or, would it still be better to build a dedicated ESXi host?

I was also considering taking my current PC hardware and making that into a server, however upgrading to 16 GB in DDR2 is butt expensive now and replacing my PC in addition is not cost-effective.

Pickup two of these. HP xw8400 Workstation Xeon Dual-Core 5150 2.66GHz 4GB 500GB DVD±RW DL Quadro FX 1500 Vista Business w/RAID HP xw8400 xw8400 Workstation

User your q9550 to run server 2008 R2 and load Starwind for ISCSI interface to each of the HPs. Also load VirtualCenter on that same box since it will be 64bit. You can run the HPs as they are for now and upgrade them to 32GB of RAM later.

Use your laptop as the VC client and your windows workstation on the domain to test GPO and what not. You can always create WindowXP VMs to do some more labs to push out GPO's, updates, etc.

VT