VMware lab

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I am looking to expand my knowledge and experience with VMware products and want to setup a home lab with multiple ESXi hosts, and make use of the evaluation software for labbing. I know people have made use of the HP micro servers in the past so I am looking for up to date suggestions on what I should purchase and approximate costs...

 

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The Microservers are still good for VMware labbing they are currently still enjoying the 100 note cashback offer for the n54l's so that is definitely worth considering and for a vSphere lab they will do the job nicely. However looking into the future you might want to consider a single box that can take up to 32GB of ram of which Shuttle do a few. If you look around a decent vSphere lab should cost you no more than £300 for a system capable of nesting 3 ESXi hosts a vcentre and an Iscsi/nfs target.

 

There are a number of options out there for you, like Dale said the Microserver is a good option but they are currently limited to 16GB, however the new version of the Microserver features an Intel processor capable of taking up to 32GB so you may well find that the server unofficially supports more than the 16GB mentioned.

I would definitely look at the Shuttle route (something I did and blogged about here with great results (although more expensive than the £300 that Dale mentions).

Alternatively there is of course the workstation\laptop route as well, having a motherboard that accepts 32GB of ram isn't that rare these days, even laptops support 32GB of ram now (I run an MSI GT70 with 32GB of ram for exactly this purpose so that I have a lab on the move).

There are lots of possibilities and the world is your oyster when it comes to what it is you do and how much you spend.

 

Are there any other reasons for VMWare labs at home other then to test?

 

To test and learn new technology along with certification studies.

 

Thanks Theprof. I thought I was missing out on something but not up to VMWare cert/tech for a while!

 

Just because your not on the VMWare trail is no reason to ignore the idea of a VMWare lab server, I had an HP ML110 G6 running ESX for a while for lab purposes. I've just rebuilt to run as a Hyper-V host as I have a lot more contact with that than VMWare at present.

The ESX install is still sat on a USB stick ready to be plugged back in to the internal port should it be needed again though!

I'm not to impressed with the Gen8 Microserver to be honest, with only 2 DIMM slots even if unofficially it'll support more than 16GB the cost per DIMM isn't exactly going to be cheap.

 

Thanks for all the replies, it looks like the HP microservers will be the cheapest option for me. Can anyone advise where I can get the £100 cashback?

 

I thought the cash back only ran on purchases until the end of June. If you bought it before then the form is http://www.serversplus.com/pdfs/ms100_june13.pdf

 

I'm thinking about selling my lab which contains a couple of microservers.

Let me know if you are interested Lab | VMFocus

 

craigie can you PM the prices you are looking to get for them

 

I too am looking at setting up a lab.
I was considering HP Proliant DL360 G4P's for doing this.

I guess the recommendation would be 3 of these?

My desktop PC isn't really up to scratch, though it might be good enough as a VCS?