Lab building...

My head is somewhat spinning a little this evening.

VCP-NV is my current goal. I've got an ESX Server. It has an i5 (Quad Core) and 32GB RAM, and 9 Physical network ports.

I've got a 500GB SSD and 4x2TB RAID10 (passed through to a VM so it is not directly available to ESX - only to a VM).

Is this sufficient to basically have a single box NSX lab? I have 100Mb Cisco 3750 switches, not 1Gb. Are these sufficient for the physical networking aspects, or should I plump for a Cisco SG300-10 porter?

If the 100Mb FastEthernet is enough to test stuff (I'm guessing they won't be) then I'll make do with those.

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Comments

dsgm

I have a question for you, i want to pursue the VCP-NV also, what do i need to place on my ESX server to lab this.

Let me ask this what image or VM do i need and where can i get it, i have been using Vmware Hol but would love it in my environment.

Thanks for your help

Deathmage

gorebrush wrote: »

My head is somewhat spinning a little this evening.

VCP-NV is my current goal. I've got an ESX Server. It has an i5 (Quad Core) and 32GB RAM, and 9 Physical network ports.

I've got a 500GB SSD and 4x2TB RAID10 (passed through to a VM so it is not directly available to ESX - only to a VM).

Is this sufficient to basically have a single box NSX lab? I have 100Mb Cisco 3750 switches, not 1Gb. Are these sufficient for the physical networking aspects, or should I plump for a Cisco SG300-10 porter?

If the 100Mb FastEthernet is enough to test stuff (I'm guessing they won't be) then I'll make do with those.

for testing 100 mbit is fine unless your doing network thrashing intentionally. For testing that should be fine, let be honest how much bandwidth does a ping use or a tracert?

gorebrush

That's good news. I've got a few routers as well - could do some L3 pretending in the middle as well.

Deathmage

gorebrush wrote: »

That's good news. I've got a few routers as well - could do some L3 pretending in the middle as well.

Now your getting creative, that's not allowed!

gorebrush

Well it's that or I try and sell these and buy some SG's. I dont think I need to. I could have made £500 from selling these bits, but if I can use them effectively with NSX then that is even better.

jibbajabba

Can almost get two SG300 for that. Man I love these Puppis.

gorebrush

Well I've got 2 x 3750's and 3 x 1841's oh and an Access Server I don't want/need. SG300's better? I mean, the SG300's are slient, Gb, and while not as feature rich as my Catalysts, man, dat 1Gb speed. Mmmm. I've got a Mikrotik Routerboard in my rack as well - that is most handy.

Might have to order an SG300 anyway though, that price is too good to pass up.

How many physical ports do I need then? SG-300-10 is £158.... Mmmmmm

JeanM

I picked up a not managed gigabit 8port switch for esxi hosts, this way they aren't tied down to the 100fe on 3550s...that may work for you as well unless you must have managed switches for NSX lab? So I basically connect the vSwitches to a pair of gigabit 8ports and from there connect to my cisco lab as needed.

gorebrush

I've seen one blog post online where one chap is using VyOS inside his ESX.

The problem I've got (after spending a good few hours on it) is that I can't wrap my head around ESX on ESX virtualisation. However, I have proved that my lab can run 6 x ESX hosts and NSX and a few Windows VM's without too many issues. I think I may need to read a bit more yet, but I can't resist getting things actually working first. I think I will try again tomorrow.

I believe what I should do is read some more about VCP-DCV style topics first before trying to do NSX - I can always loopback and do the DCV exam afterwards but learning it that way around seems to make more sense to me. I understand all the networking components, but trying to nest ESX and connect things together has hurt my brain.

I created some shared storage using Openfiler and let it have a 200GB SSD partition to use as shared storage. However, the problem I had was gettting one of the nested ESX servers to see the NFS share. I will try this again tomorrow - and I will forget about the NSX goal - I'm going to take it back to scratch.

joelsfood

Gorebrush, I definitely think that's a good plan. Nested setups can get rather complex anyway, but when you add NSX into the picture, it's a lot worse, and if you don't have a good handle on how the things underneath work (ie, dcv), you're going to end up with problems taht you can't troubleshoot and won't know if it's a problem with your NSX setup or your ESX setup.

dsgm

I see my question was completely ignored...

gorebrush

I do apologise. Basically, you need the NSX software. You can either get it through being a partner with VMware, or, some very clever googling

Just find the filename of the NSX Manager from their website, then google that, you'll come up with some hits quickly.

dsgm

gorebrush wrote: »

I do apologise. Basically, you need the NSX software. You can either get it through being a partner with VMware, or, some very clever googling

Just find the filename of the NSX Manager from their website, then google that, you'll come up with some hits quickly.

Thank you very much

gorebrush

OK so I've missed a trick here. I've got a desktop with i7 and 16GB RAM so I can run vCenter and AD on that, that saves some memory.

So I don't need to buy anything at all now - I'll get the SG300 later on if I think I really need it but I'm loathed to spend money until I really am sure I actually really need it.

Going through VCP learning now for ESX

Going to schedule the VCP-NV for around 2 months time and work it backwards (including time to learn VCP-DCV topics properly first), then I might as well take the VCP-DCV exam, then I'll go VCIX-NV then CCIE: DC