vSphere lab setup

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Just ordered this bad boy HP Proliant N40L for a vSphere lab... along with 8GB of memory which should be enough for the time being... If the server is good I'll probably order another one.

The next thing on the list would be some sort of a shared storage and a gigabit switch, cisco preferably as I have quite a bit of experience with it.

Can anyone recommend a good storage appliance and a cisco switch?

 

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Nice one mate!

You could go for the Lefthand VSA HP P4000 LeftHand Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA) Trial Software or I like Openfiler if you want a free iSCSI SAN.

Cisco switch, you would need to go for a gigabit so would need a G model, but dang mate that is going to be expensive. What about a HP 2510G instead?

Are you going to purchase a couple of half height PCI E cards to expand the NIC capacity?

 

I bought 2 of these for my lab as well.

http://www.certforums.com/forums/vmware-certifications/47639-cheap-server-run-esxi.html

 

@Craigie, yeah I'll probably need to get more than one NIC and I will probably also end up using openfiler. Switch wise, I'll like the procurve too, but I'll need to shop around...

@Beerbaron, I almost got the ML110, I know its a great server, I used to have one as a loaner from work... however I got the N40L because its a small, quiet, low power consumption little server... It does the trick for VCP5 and even VCAP-DCA although it does not support Direct IO Path... You can also add 16GB of memory and with two of these servers together at 32GB it should be enough for what I want to do. I also like the $150 rebate .

 

Nice one Theprof, as that's a nice choice of a server. I take it you're planning a VCP exam sometime soon?

 

Well I got it for a few reasons; VCP, VCAP, Labs, blog, etc... just got tired of using workstation... its about time I built something.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Know what you mean mate, I have nested ESXi5 running on a single ML115 at the moment. Pretty difficult to do all the cool things properly without having some dedicated hardware.

Let us know how you get on with this, as I have started to tell the wife, we need some more 'hardware' in our life LOL

 

Haha! Make sure she knows the hardware you're talking about ;)

Actually I've been contemplating of whether or not I should go for SSD's and use the swap to host feature... The servers will have 8GB of memory and it would probably help with the performance.

 

Out of interest, I'm looking to do things the other way round, move from a single dedicated ESXI PC to vmware workstation

is there anything I wont be able to do? I take it the limitations are for the VCP side of things?

Thanks

Andy

 

Personally for me, I like having a realistic lab, I try to mimic what I work with at the office, makes testing a lot easier but also a different experience when learning. Of course its more expensive and takes up space, but I think it's worth it and a good investment.