Need help setting up a virtual lab using VMWare ESXi

los5011

Hello i have experience creating virtual machines and allocating resources etc with vmware. I wanted to take that knowledge a little further and start setting up a home lab building a server environment using vmware esxi (trial). Pretty much i was trying to figure out what all will i need to manage the virtual machines that are stored on the host? vcenter? I have a dell poweredge server at home with 3 TB hard drives that are in a raid 5 config and 6gb of ram. would i install vcenter or the vcenter client on the server as well? so confused. Thanks I just dont know where to start

Essendon

Yep you need vCenter to manage your hosts and their VM's from a single pane of glass. You could manage each ESXi host using the vSphere client too, but that would be a pain so vCenter is the way to go.

Though not very detailed, here's a link to a blog I got going: New lab! | Everything Virtual!
Read this link for the groundwork you need to do before you build your nested ESXi hosts: virtuallyGhetto: How to Enable Nested ESXi & Other Hypervisors in vSphere 5.1

6 GB RAM is probably just (only just) enough to get you by. Your lab may run slow. I'd break the RAID on your server and free up some space and increase performance (at the cost of redundancy, but this a lab so it doesnt matter). Nested ESXi is the way to go.

Take a look at the two links above and post up any specific questions.

tstrip007

I would start by downloading the vCenter and ESXi install files from vmware. It comes with a 60 day license. Then this website can help with setting everything up Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 1: The Story | Boerlowie's Blog

You can manage vms with just one esxi host but if your looking learn and test all of the cool features you will want vCenter which manages mutliple hosts along with many other things . As for hardware... I would be more concerned with how much RAM and CPU cores you have. I would recommend upgrading from 6gb to 16gb.

Sounds Good

tstrip007 wrote: »

I would start by downloading the vCenter and ESXi install files from vmware. It comes with a 60 day license. Then this website can help with setting everything up Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab – Part 1: The Story | Boerlowie's Blog

You can manage vms with just one esxi host but if your looking learn and test all of the cool features you will want vCenter which manages mutliple hosts along with many other things . As for hardware... I would be more concerned with how much RAM and CPU cores you have. I would recommend upgrading from 6gb to 16gb.

Couldn't you just theoretically install both vcenter as well as another esxi host on the original esxi?

Essendon

Most definitely you can @Sounds Good. Check out my blog (I linked to it above), you can nest ESXi within ESXi and lab to your heart's content. Things like EVC/FT dont work, most other things work a treat.

kj0

You can give AutoLab a go as well.

LabGuides.com – Autolab