VMware nested vs. physical lab

Hi All

I plan to build small home lab to do VCP 5.5 certfication.

What option is better for home small lab physical or nested lab.

I could get two HP N54L microservers with 8GB RAM each, managed layer 2/3 switch and some shared ISCSI storage like iomega ix4-200d or better buy powerful desktop with mulitcore processor and plenty of ram and nest 2xesxi host in VMware Workstation?

Could you give me cons and pros for each solution, please.

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blargoe

For VCP certification prep only, a nested lab should be sufficient, provided you are running a multicore, 8GB min/16GB recommended, with some SSD.

Working inside of the guest VMs hosted by the nested ESXi envrionment can be sluggish, but certainly doable (SSD helps). You can include a Free iSCSI NAS in your nested envrionment, or host it on physical hardware, as long as your nested servers have network connectivity to the NAS.

The only real cons of the physical lab is the high cost, really.

tstrip007

If you have the means to go physical I would. PROS - You will be able simulate what its like to build an entire environment from scratch. Be sure to check the HCL

Cons are going to be the costs, possible increase in power consumption, and NOISE. I think it would be a great investment because you would prob use it long after you finish the VCP.

Nested - Cheap, quick, convenient, adequate, portable (if on a laptop), quiet. (The way I went)

szafa23

HP N54L are relativity cheap (quiet small servers) recently but RAM is very expensive. I could get two N54L with 8GB RAM each for price of Intel i7 desktop with 16GB of RAM. Would you buy two HP N54L or decent desktop.

Let me know what solution would you choose and why

Asif Dasl

I would go with a nested solution first, especially if you are just going for VCP. If you have other studies like Microsoft or you intend to go further than VCP and on to VCAP-DCA then I would suggest a physical lab. I know you can go nested for VCAP-DCA but I personally prefer working with a physical setup. The biggest downside is expense as others have mentioned.

I wouldn't go with the HP N54L because you are not going to have enough RAM and we are about 6-9 months or so from the release of VMware 6 (estimate!) and I can see it needing more RAM than 5.5 does now. For your lab be sure to build it with 32GB of RAM in mind, by that I mean buy 2 sticks of 8 GB RAM and leave the 2 other slots spare. vCenter Server 5.5 needs 6 GB of RAM at a minimum + 4GB host + 4GB host + 2 GB Client OS = 16GB. vMotion with small linux OS's like Damn Small Linux or something.

There was one post recently which mentioned someone running a 16 GB VMware lab and they said it was very low on resources. So when vSphere 6 comes out then you can add the extra RAM in if you can't afford it now.

Essendon

szafa23 wrote: »

HP N54L are relativity cheap (quiet small servers) recently but RAM is very expensive. I could get two N54L with 8GB RAM each for price of Intel i7 desktop with 16GB of RAM. Would you buy two HP N54L or decent desktop.

Let me know what solution would you choose and why

If I were you, I'd buy a used HP DL380 G6/G7 with tons of RAM (preferably 32GB or more). If you are in the USA, I have seen G6's with 72GB RAM go for about $700. Great bargain if you asked me.

I have a G6 with 48GB RAM, 2 x quad Xeon processors and about 2TB in SAS storage - the thing's a beast and there's NO slowness in any nested machine. I highly recommend you buy a server instead of a desktop, because like Asif pointed out subsequent releases of vSphere/Hyper-v will need more grunt so why not get something good to start off with. Besides, most if not all home desktop machines' mobo's max out at 32GB RAM.

Nested lab, ALL THE WAY. I have used a nested lab for the VCP, the VCAP5-DCA, the VCAP-DCD and my MCSE: Private Cloud (in progress) certs and had NO problems. Another advantage of a nested lab is the ability to allocate multiple NIC's to the nested ESXi machines and play with all aspects of vSphere networking till your brain bleeds. Multi-NIC vMotion, hybrid vSwitches/vDS setups, NIOC are all easily labbed up in a nested lab because you can assign multiple NICs. Hope this helps.

kriscamaro68

Essendon wrote: »

If I were you, I'd buy a used HP DL380 G6/G7 with tons of RAM (preferably 32GB or more). If you are in the USA, I have seen G6's with 72GB RAM go for about $700. Great bargain if you asked me.

I have a G6 with 48GB RAM, 2 x quad Xeon processors and about 2TB in SAS storage - the thing's a beast and there's NO slowness in any nested machine. I highly recommend you buy a server instead of a desktop, because like Asif pointed out subsequent releases of vSphere/Hyper-v will need more grunt so why not get something good to start off with. Besides, most if not all home desktop machines' mobo's max out at 32GB RAM.

Nested lab, ALL THE WAY. I have used a nested lab for the VCP, the VCAP5-DCA, the VCAP-DCD and my MCSE: Private Cloud (in progress) certs and had NO problems. Another advantage of a nested lab is the ability to allocate multiple NIC's to the nested ESXi machines and play with all aspects of vSphere networking till your brain bleeds. Multi-NIC vMotion, hybrid vSwitches/vDS setups, NIOC are all easily labbed up in a nested lab because you can assign multiple NICs. Hope this helps.

Here are some servers I used close to the what Essendon talks about: http://www.deepdiscountservers.com/dell-poweredge-c1100-cs24-ty.html
http://www.deepdiscountservers.com/hp-proliant-dl160-g6-491532-b21.html
http://www.deepdiscountservers.com/dell-poweredge-c6100-xs23-ty3-2-node.html

jibbajabba

I used to use nested setups but I always run out of IO. So SSDs are really necessary when using nested setups. If you go with normal SATA drives you can certainly use it just for the sake of VCP labbing, but once you realise how much fun that is, you will start wanting more and your cheap setup suddenly becomes expensive as your cheap kit becomes redundant you buy beefy hardware anyway.

I do see the point of NICs. I am now using a physical setup but only got two dual nics. That really isn't enough (would need at least 4 or even 6 to play properly).

As a sidenote - if you do go shopping for servers on eBay, make sure the servers have CPUs supporting Intel-VT+EPT or AMD-V+RVI. Without the additional features vSphere will work, but not nested.

szafa23

Thanks all for all information. Looks like I'll get desktop and start playing with nested configuration.

What you thing about below configuration (I'd like to choose AMD because is much cheaper

)

AMD FX8-8320 Black Edition Vishera 8 Core AM3+ 3.5GHz 16MB 125W
Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 AM3+ AMD 760G DDR3 mATX
Corsair 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600Mhz CL11 XMS3 Performance Desktop Memory Kit

I have already :

3x SSD 60GB OCZ Vertex 2
1x SSD 128GB Samsung

In future I could expand memory to 32GB

Asif Dasl

Looks fine, here's someone else who has the same board for a VMware lab:

vSphere Home Lab: Part 1 | Ben's Jibber Jabber

szafa23

I have one more question. Should I get mobo with SATA3 controller for nested lab or could be better to buy some dedicated RAID card in future for storage? At the moment I have just SATA2 drives but all new SSD are SATA3.

Asif Dasl

Good point, I didn't notice the SATA2 controllers - I didn't think they made them any more. That will make a huge difference in transfer speeds on SSD alright. You could get sepertate SATA3 controllers but you have 4 x SSD so you would be better checking for another motherboard that uses SATA3 controllers. Can you use an ATX motherboard in your case? The other one is MATX. I had a quick check on NewEgg and all the SATA3 motherboards that were also AM3+ socket were ATX.

QHalo

I have both. Both are great, but one word of advice, max the RAM all the way. You'll run out of it quickly and 16GB isn't enough these days with requirements changing on vCenter and ESXi 5.5 hosts. I have 16GB in both my physicals and its getting tight.

kj0

I only have 16GB in my Desktop that I am nesting my environment on.

I am running my Vms off 2 x 128Gb SSD's. They are getting slow once as I am running a fair bit off them now. I was all good with memory when I was using 5.1 but 5.5 now demands 4Gb per host, and your vcenter Server will require minimum 4GB. it's tight. I"ve just been looking for servers on eBay tonight (Bad idea staying in front of a computer while VMs build_) Found a HP server with 32GB RAM, 4 x dual opterons, $230 AU. That's about $210 US. not bad. - But I'm no longer allowed to buy anything more until I pass my current course. (it's probably a good thing for the moment, otherwise I would just wonder off explorering too many things not relevant to VCP)

szafa23

Can't buy server because of size, noise, heat and electricity bills

Money are tight and now I need to decide between memory or better proc.

What option is better for neste esxi 5.5 lab

32GB RAM and AMD Athlon II X2 270 3.4GHz AM3 2MB 65W (always can upgrade proc0

or

just 16GB RAM (again can upgrade later) for start and AMD FX8-8320 Black Edition Vishera 8 Core AM3+ 3.5GHz 16MB 125W

decisions, decisions

kj0

When is "Later"? 16Gb would be a good start, I'm almost completed my training and still running 16GB.