Show your home lab / your ESX/ESXi architecture

log32

I wonder if this thread will go down the drain?

I promise to give my lab pics when I get home from work!:)

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crashdump

is ESX/ESXi free for personal use? That stuff is really pricy? Isn't it?

I use Vmware Fusion for my virtual machines...

saspro

crashdump wrote: »

is ESX/ESXi free for personal use? That stuff is really pricy? Isn't it?

I use Vmware Fusion for my virtual machines...

ESXi has a free version available. You can even use it in production environments.

Akaricloud

My home lab consists of a single Dell Optiplex 790 running nested ESXi and various VMs that I've used for playing around with stuff.

I don't really have much space(or want to power) a full server rack right now and this solution was cheap plus works fantastically.

pennystrader

My home lab consists of a Dell T110 server with One Quad-core Intel® Xeon® 3400 series processor, 16 GB of DDR3 memory and ESXi 5.0 with a Technet subscription so I have my CEH lab and domain controllers, web servers, etc. It works out well and I can test everything I need fairly easy.

networkjutsu

This setup was going to be a home lab + production but I don't think I'll pursue the VCP exam anymore. I was going to pursue it since I was gonna ask my previous employer to give me professional experience in VMware but since I left the company then there's really no reason for me to take it anymore. But here's my ESXi host at home.

Lian Li PC-V351B
Supermico MBD-X9SCL+-F
Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge
Antec EA-380D Green
2 x Kingston 8GB DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered
SanDisk Cruzer Blade 4GB USB Flash Drive

it_consultant

2x Dell R610 with dual quad cores and 32GB of RAM with Server 2012 Standard Edition and VMWare workstation.

Essendon

One physical HP DL 380 G5 with 32GB RAM, 2 dual-core processors, tons of storage (SAS disks) - running ESXi 5. I have multiple nested ESXi hosts, a DC/DNS, vCenter, vMA and vCloud Director running inside it. The vCenter VM runs Starwind SAN that provides shared storage to my ESXi hosts for vMotion, FT, DRS and the rest of the cool stuff.

Runs like a treat.

it_consultant

The DL 380 gen 5 is a workhorse, I just bought 2 gen 8s.

Essendon

it_consultant wrote: »

The DL 380 gen 5 is a workhorse, I just bought 2 gen 8s.

Gen 8's! That must've cost you an arm and a leg!

neilperry

networkjutsu wrote: »

This setup was going to be a home lab + production but I don't think I'll pursue the VCP exam anymore. I was going to pursue it since I was gonna ask my previous employer to give me professional experience in VMware but since I left the company then there's really no reason for me to take it anymore. But here's my ESXi host at home.

Lian Li PC-V351B
Supermico MBD-X9SCL+-F
Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge
Antec EA-380D Green
2 x Kingston 8GB DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered
SanDisk Cruzer Blade 4GB USB Flash Drive

I essentially have the same thing. Excellent set up but I have 32GB of ram. 8GB sticks are so cheap at Superbiiz (https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=W1333EB8GM). At 54 dollars a stick its a no brainer.

esxwhitebox.jpg

it_consultant

Essendon wrote: »

Gen 8's! That must've cost you an arm and a leg!

I should have said "I had someone else buy the hp..."

since there is no way I buy that amount of computer equipment for my labbing!

Essendon

I thought exactly that it_consultant, but then maybe he's got the cash sitting around! Those Gen 8's must cost in excess of 10-15K, probably more?

networkjutsu

neilperry wrote: »

I essentially have the same thing. Excellent set up but I have 32GB of ram. 8GB sticks are so cheap at Superbiiz (https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=W1333EB8GM). At 54 dollars a stick its a no brainer.

Yea, I saw that build too. I think it's called Baby Dragon? The person that showed me this build has 32GB of RAM as well. I just followed his build except the RAM. My "production" right now is not even reaching 8GB of RAM yet. I have majority of my VMs turned off right now. Only the ones that I really use are currently powered on. I've hit over 10GB of RAM for my production before when I was running my website at home. Though, it was on a different home server. I've also played around with pfSense and majority of its features but decided to just stick with my wireless router. I think I've reached a certain point where I just want everything to work now. That's why I also ditched my old Openfiler setup and replaced it with Synology DS1812+ NAS. Here's a partial screenshot of mine. Total of NICs now is three but I stopped using one of them since I don't run pfSense anymore.

discount81

Essendon wrote: »

I thought exactly that it_consultant, but then maybe he's got the cash sitting around! Those Gen 8's must cost in excess of 10-15K, probably more?

Wow Australia really is expensive now if DL380s cost $15k

I just bought some here and they cost around $7000 each

it_consultant

Yeah, it was about 7k, which is what my company pays for the standard Dell R710. It depends, a lot, on the drive configuration. That can easily double the price of an HP, or any server.

discount81

it_consultant wrote: »

Yeah, it was about 7k, which is what my company pays for the standard Dell R710. It depends, a lot, on the drive configuration. That can easily double the price of an HP, or any server.

Yeah, especially earlier this year hard drives were scarce, I couldn't even find someone who stocked under 1TB sas drives, which drove the price right up.

Essendon

Yeah, I checked the specs of those servers we bought and they turned out to be ESXi spec'd - with 96GB RAM, 16 NIC's (network doesnt do 10GbE), dual quads. That drove the price right up.

it_consultant

The intel quad port gig is like $400, so if you got 16 of them...well, we can extrapolate. I have to add an additional $1200 to each of my servers because on top of the 8/16GB FC card, we also put the Brocade 1860 CNA in our servers. We do have 10GB, I recommend upgrading.

QHalo

Essendon wrote: »

Yeah, I checked the specs of those servers we bought and they turned out to be ESXi spec'd - with 96GB RAM, 16 NIC's (network doesnt do 10GbE), dual quads. That drove the price right up.

Yeah I was gonna say, we were looking at HP DL380 G8's with dual 8 cores and 192GB of RAM and dual 10Gbe adapters and they were not even close to 7k. No internal drives.

it_consultant

QHalo wrote: »

Yeah I was gonna say, we were looking at HP DL380 G8's with dual 8 cores and 192GB of RAM and dual 10Gbe adapters and they were not even close to 7k. No internal drives.

We bought four of the Dell equivalent (R810) and they were approximately $24,000 a piece. With drives but without the 10GB adapters.

QHalo

Sorry to derail this thread a bit more but we got Dell R720s with no drives, dual SD and dual QLogic 8262's CNAs and they were a bit less than half what you paid. Drives really drive up the price.

On topic
My home lab -

2 Hosts
X8SILF-O
16GB of RAM each
16GB Flash drive
Rosewill 400w
Lian Li cases
HP 1810 24port Gb switch
QNAP T459 Pro II - 4x 1TB drives

pitviper

For those of you looking for rack style lab servers – Cisco recently refreshed their rack mount line leaving the 1U c200 and 2U c210 servers as EOS. I just picked up 2 c200s, each with 1x Xeon E5649 6-core (can add a second CPU), 8GB RAM for roughly 88% off ($580/each). Add a cheap SAS controller and a few drives and it makes a nice ESX box.

QHalo

Where did you nab those?

pitviper

QHalo wrote: »

Where did you nab those?

CDW. I'm debating whether or not to snag a 3rd.

joehalford01

The 210 looks like a deal at first glance, still have to fill it with drives though...

pitviper

joehalford01 wrote: »

The 210 looks like a deal at first glance, still have to fill it with drives though...

Yeah, I stayed away from the C210 only because of cost of the 2.5” drives.

Sure you would need drives and a VMWare compatible storage controller… but considering that the entire C200 server cost $200 LESS than the price of its CPU alone (E5649) it’s a pretty good deal!

I just consolidated the 2 C200 M2s into 1 unit, so my ESX setup looks like this:

Cisco C200 M2 dual 6-core Xeon E5649s, 24GB RAM, 6x GBe NICs
Cisco C200 M1 dual quad Xeon E5520s, 24GB RAM, 6x GBe NICs

Was running an iSCSI box too but I lost it in the flood

Roguetadhg

I came here expecting pictures, Darn it.

gc8dc95

Poweredge 2950 III

- 2x quadcore Xeon
- 2x 146gb 15k SAS HDD
- USB Stick for ESXi
- 16gb Ram
- 2 GbE Ports

This is the current setup. I am just getting setup up with the ESXi stuff. I plan to make some changes and additions in the future.

log32

I actually have a simple workstation with 4GB of Ram and a Dual Core processor running ESXI (can only run 2-3 Linux machines but that's pretty much all I need for RHCE at the moment) and I open vSphere through my laptop to it, server costs are too high and I can't see a reason to spend so much money when I have Dell R610 with 96MB of ram X 4 at work with ESXi on it and I'm the sysadmin

eansdad

I currently have a Dell E6410 (i5, 8GB RAM, 1TB HD) for a lab since I'm not at home much. I was looking to either build a work station with AMD FX-8350 4.0ghz 8 core, 32GB RAM and 2x 120GB SSDs for main OS with 4x 1TB SATA 6.0GB/s for storage or a similar spec'd Dell 2950 (2x quad core, 32GB RAM .. etc) or possible HP GL380. I want it to be able to simulate a WAN with the CISCO lab I want to get.

Currently studing for CCENT/CCNA, MCSA:2008, Linux+ and would like to get into OSCP, CCNA:Sec and/or CCNP and VCP.

Sometimes ADD can be fun!!!