VMware Hardware

hiddenknight821hiddenknight821 Member Posts: 1,209 ■■■■■■□□□□
Am I hopeless? I just upgraded my CPU to a Core 2 Quad Q9550 as I was trying to save money rather than doing a rebuild. I should also mention that I had to replace the motherboard for it as well as I had an accident with the first installation, which wasn't pretty.

I ran ESXi in Virtualbox on top of my Windows 7 64-bit host. Apparently, it threw me a warning message when I was installing it. It said I lacked the ability to do hardware virtualization.

So I did some searching around, and then it came to my attention that I also needed the Intel's EPT (Extended Page Table) support for second-level address translation, so that I can run nested VMs, especially the 64-bit ones. I was rather disappointed that the virtualization community didn't stress the importance of the EPT feature as equally as VT-x and VT-d.

So, can someone recommends a really cheap set up for vSphere 5.5? I don't mind building a new system or buying a used system. Someone mentioned a Dell Precision T5500. Is it totally worth it or are there other cheaper alternatives such as renting? Can I still do away with my current set up with only 8 GB of RAM?

Comments

  • gbdavidxgbdavidx Member Posts: 840
    I am trying to follow this lab guide once i get a couple grand

    ESXi 5 Home Lab Specs | Home Server Blog
  • bermovickbermovick Member Posts: 1,135 ■■■■□□□□□□
    I looked for a good month trying to find something "cheap". The best I could get was a T5500 from some eBay retailer I emailed directly for a quote. $450 for a quad-core box with 32G ram, or 500 for a hex-core. I'm thinking 32 will cover everything we'll use it for (as long as we don't try using everything at once). If you want/don't mind a rack server you can get a good one for about the same price (look for DL160, but be sure it's a Gen 6).

    Finally the guy in the CBT videos runs everything in vmware workstation (nesting ESX inside that), and says his box with 16G can (barely) run it -- he later moves to a 32G box to make things easier, but it sounds like for labbing/studies a 16G box would be enough, provided your guests have small footprints; he was using DSL for them.
    Latest Completed: CISSP

    Current goal: Dunno
  • dave330idave330i Member Posts: 2,091 ■■■■■■■■■■
    For VCP level lab, you don't have to build a home lab. VMware's Hands on Lab works well.
    2018 Certification Goals: Maybe VMware Sales Cert
    "Simplify, then add lightness" -Colin Chapman
  • SamMerlotteSamMerlotte Member Posts: 44 ■■□□□□□□□□
    Dave, what type of minimum hardware would you recommend for a VCAP5-DCA lab?
  • hiddenknight821hiddenknight821 Member Posts: 1,209 ■■■■■■□□□□
    bermovick wrote: »
    The best I could get was a T5500 from some eBay retailer I emailed directly for a quote. $450 for a quad-core box with 32G ram, or 500 for a hex-core.

    Is that so? Because that deal is a steal! I'd definitely get it if it's just $500. I was looking around for a 2-quad-core box with 32 GB on Ebay. I see that most of them are quoted around $800. Although, I've been toying with the idea of buying a couple of 4GB 1333 Mhz DDR3 PC3-10660 ECC Registered DIMMs (not sure what T5500 accepts though), doing a mix and match while buying a 2 quad-core box with low RAM spec. I see the low-spec boxes are being sold for a lot less. As far as I know, the T5500 has 6 RAM slots with 3 additional slots on the riser card.

    I'd prefer creating nested ESXi guests in VMware/VirtualBox for several reasons:
    1. I can easily reverse to previous snapshot in case I screw up.
    2. I can save electricity by putting my system to sleep rather than running it constantly while I'm away.
    3. I don't have to reinstall each time after the 60-day trial expiration as I can just simply go back to one of the snapshot restoration points.

    What you think?
  • dave330idave330i Member Posts: 2,091 ■■■■■■■■■■
    Dave, what type of minimum hardware would you recommend for a VCAP5-DCA lab?

    I had an Intel i7 with 16GB and ~100GB of SSD to support VMware Workstation. You don't need much for DCA lab. Check out the Autolab: vSphere 5 AutoLab. I didn't want to deal with building my VMs, so I used theirs.
    2018 Certification Goals: Maybe VMware Sales Cert
    "Simplify, then add lightness" -Colin Chapman
Sign In or Register to comment.