Do you have a physical or a virtual lab?

If you have a virtual lab, what's your technology or setup like? If physical, how many PCs?

I'm using VMware Workstation and soon will install Vmware Server.

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Comments

gbdavidx

i'm using vmware workstation, 3 servers, need to add another one with 2 clients, is vmware server that much better?

binarysoul

gbdavidx wrote: »

i'm using vmware workstation, 3 servers, need to add another one with 2 clients, is vmware server that much better?

Server is definitely better, but needs more resources which I don't have on my laptop. I only have 4GB of RAM, not enough to carry a server plus clients, but I will install once to see how it goes.

gc8dc95

I have one server running esxi 5.1 and workstation on my laptop (16GB, ssd, and i5.)

Slowhand

I've started really digging using VMWare Workstation to spin up machines I need for labbing. Considering that I generally don't need more than two, sometimes three, servers for any given lab-scenario that's more than enough to run a couple of VMs with two or three gigs of RAM each.

I've got an HP Elitebook 2560p laptop with 16GB of RAM and a nice little quad-core i5 CPU. I've got a solid state hard drive I want to drop into it, and then I'm going to get a nice, big storage drive to put into the expansion bay to hold my VMs. It serves pretty much all my needs, and lets me take my studies out and about so I can plunk down in a coffee shop as I work.

TheProf

I have a physical lab.. 3 servers, a NAS, and a switch.. installed vSphere 5.1.

blueberries

Both. And they are connected.

QHalo

Virtual - my laptop W530, 32GB of RAM, SSDs, nested ESXi, vCenter and two ONTAP virtual storage arrays
Physical - two whitebox ESXi hosts and a QNAP NAS

cruwl

Virtual - Primary host: Server 2008 R2 running hyper-V - Phenom II x4 3.5Ghz 8gb Ram 90Gb SSD primary 8Tb storage space
Virtual - Secondary Host when needed: Laptop running Server 2008 R2 running Hyper-V 16Gb ram 600GB HDD.

Asif Dasl

Physical:

1 x Asus M5A97 R2.0 - Athlon II X4 640 - 32GB RAM - 256 GB SSD - Windows 7/ESXi 5.1/Gaming
1 x Asus M5A97 R2.0 - Athlon II X4 640 - 32GB RAM - 500 GB HDD - Windows 7/ESXi 5.1
1 x Atom 330 - 4GB RAM - 500 GB HDD - Server 2008 R2 DC
1 x ReadyNAS Pro 4 - 4 x 2TB
1 x Netgear GS108T 8 Port Gig Switch

I also have 2 x HP NC365T 4 Port Gig NICs but they are not being fully utiltised by ESXi because I don't have a big enough switch at the moment but I won't upgrade that until I totally upgrade my setup when the Shuttle SZ87R6 is released. I'll probably put 2 x 8 core FX8350 in to the 2 ESXi Hosts and run Hyper-V on them.

binarysoul

Interesting responses so far. Honestly, I was expecting most would have virtual networks, but I was wrong as the responses so far are mixed.

Qahlo said he has 32 GB of RAM! Divide that by 8 to get how much RAM I have.

Snow.bros

I have a virtual don't find time to play around with it.

NinjaBoy

Both

DevilWAH

I have both, I am lucky in that work have given us 4 X Dell 2950 servers with 32gig ram a piece and a netapp server with about 30Tbyes. Some FC switches and full VMware licencing. So we have a nice development lab set up to play with and can steal chunks of.

I then have second 8 core machine with 32gig ram for running GNS3 for my cisco stuff, and a bunch of old switches laying around.

All accessible via VPN so I got rid of my own personal lab a few years back. I would love to have a physical CISCO lab at home and might start building it up again. But for now what work is kindly providing is great.