Ending a good year with...

Mastering vSphere 5.

Firstly, Apologies for the long post and if someone has already asked this question.

I have ordered the book and expecting it to arrive early next week. I dont think my company will send me on the course so I will self study at home. I know I wont be able to get the certification without the course

.

I have one more exam to sit to complete my MCITP:EA which is booked for the end of the month.

Looking for some advise on what hardware to use. I know all about using virtualisation capable processors, its more what have you have used for self learning and what where your limitations were.

I currently have a desktop which has a i5 Processor and 16GB ram with 1+2TB HDD.

Do I add some more memory and push it up to 32gb memory (£70) and invest in a SSD (128GB £80 or 256GB £145 Rough Prices)

OR

Do I invest in a HP micro server:
HP Micro Server (Hewlett Packard HP ProLiant N40L 1P 2GB-U Emb SATA NHP 250GB LFF 150W PS MicroServer 658553-421 | Servers Direct) £118 After cashback

16Gb Ram (£90)
2 Port Network Card (£30-£40) Any tips would be great on which nic would be best.

So the first question would be which is the best way to go?

Secondly, what would be the limitations running ESXi in VMWare Workstation? Also are there any limitations running ESXi on the HP MicroServer?

Thanks..

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Comments

dave330i

Your current setup is good enough. Don't need more RAM, but adding SSD will make a big difference.

For VCP level, you won't run into any issues using Workstation.

jibbajabba

X10MMX wrote: »

Secondly, what would be the limitations running ESXi in VMWare Workstation? Also are there any limitations running ESXi on the HP MicroServer? Thanks..

The main difference between using your PC or Microserver as (virtual) ESX host is CPU - depending on the use of the VMs that might be your bottleneck on the Microserver. Having said that - if its mainly a lab then it shouldn't really matter.

But here an example using the N40L with 16GB as vSphere host:

As you can see - the CPU doesn't do much ... CentOS runs a full LAMP stack (vbulletin) - SQL runs SQL 2008R2 Enterprise (serves DBs for vCenter and Veeam), DC 2008R2 Core and FreeNAS provides shared NFS storage for another vSphere cluster (also based on N40Ls).

If you need a lot of CPU power - stick with your PC - if you don't mind spending the cash then I'd go for the Microserver - once you are done with your studies you can use it perfectly as a NAS

And yes, whether you go for a PC or Microserver - get an SSD - I am lucky enough to use a mixture of SAS (for the VMs), SATA for storage and Hybrid SSD for Host Caching - but that costs ££ - so if you are on a budget then get at least an SSD - or if you can - two - one for the VMs and one for Host Cache (latter if you do go for the Microserver and it can be a smaller one).

X10MMX

Thanks for the information... I think I will go with using my desktop to start with and invest in a SSD. Maybe if i dive deeper into my VMWare studies I will purchase a HP Microserver...

What Size SSD's are you using? would it be worth investing in 1 big SSD or 2 smaller SSD's?