What is in your home lab?

Discussion in 'The Lounge - Off Topic' started by JK2447, Jun 15, 2017.

  1. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    Hi all,

    I don't have a lab at the moment, having sold my aging HP kit a while back, but I am considering investing again as I love having a play and breaking things. I wondered if any of you have any home labs and what you're rocking? I've been reading some good articles on VMware labs with Intel NUCs, some 10GB networks on the cheap. Does anyone have a hybrid cloud setup?

    The new NUCs have the 7th gen chips in and look pretty decent, with no fans and low power consumption although like anything, once you have added RAM and SSDs the costs start to mount.

    Cheers
    Jim
     
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  2. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    A few dell servers in the 'office' with some Cisco phones also :)

    Set up a hybrid setup with Exchange 2016 and Office 365 over Xmas as I had a big project coming up in the new year for a customer moving away from Exchange 2010. Ended up they went for Office 365 only in the end but it was good to run hybrid setup for a while.
     
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  3. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    Nice one Sparky. You always where an exchange guru.
     
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  4. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    Cheers mate - I’ve heard a few rumours that Exchange 2016 may be the last version of on premise Exchange server. I can’t see anything online about a future version – Exchange 2018?

    If that happens then that’s SBS, ISA server and Exchange server that Microsoft have discontinued – I should start learning Linux! :)
     
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  5. Jaron78

    Jaron78 Gigabyte Poster Forum Leader

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    two 48 Port Cisco Switches, couple of standard Cisco Routers and a Old Lenovo Laptop at the moment :)

    Mainly using GNS3 as a Lab in all honesty.
     
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  6. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    Very nice. I used to have a few switches back in the day sold them way back. I had packet tracer. That was a great program for emulating iOS and devices. I should look into getting that again if it's still about
     
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  7. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    I've been threatening to get more into Linux for years ha ha. I learned what I had to for esx but that's about it.

    It's a terrible shame the things MS have decommed. SBS in particular was everything in a box wasn't it. Is there anything similar mate?

    I know we're all going cloud but I don't see how they can get away from on premise can you mate? I mean what your business is aside eg gov etc. What happened to us having the choice just because. I love a good on prem server room ha ha
     
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  8. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    No real alternative to SBS unfortunately so ending up either installing Server 2012 essentials or a Hyper-V server to run a couple of VMs. Some customers with low budgets I have just migrated Exchange from SBS and left the SBS running without it for now.

    Not having Exchange on prem has helped with support calls I must admit (especially backup) but need to document Exchange online commands for some of the guys on the helpdesk for daily admin tasks.
     
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  9. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    All interesting stuff mate. Good that you do work to help the team like that. I know a lot who wouldn't share info
     
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  10. dmarsh
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    One acer laptop, does that count ? :)
     
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  11. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    Ha ha only if it's a beast and has some virtualisation software running on it!
     
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  12. Monkeychops

    Monkeychops Kilobyte Poster

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    Just an old laptop here as well at the moment.

    Maxed out with 32Gb ram and a 4 or so year old quad core.

    As soon as they pull their finger out this is being replaced with a new machine with 64Gb ram and Xeon processor, mental in a laptop!

    Used for running some lab and demo environments for work.
     
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  13. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    Nice one Monkey. Are you still doing your security thing mate? While I've got you do you have a Linux distro you would recommend for me bro
     
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  14. Monkeychops

    Monkeychops Kilobyte Poster

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    Certainly am :)

    Don't really touch anything Linux based other than Kali or Red Hat I'm afraid!

    Ubuntu seems popular, as does Debian, and CentOS being a none commercial alternative to RHEL.
     
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  15. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    Lab update: Been away from the office for the last couple of weeks and my laptop chucked it – major hassle when trying to setup Firewalls etc. so I was sent another one from the MD.

    Anyways now got a Lenevo E570 i7 32GB RAM with 256GB and 1TB SSD drives – will be migrating the lab onto my laptop now. :) :)
     
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  16. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    Sounds good mate, bet its rapid that thing bloomin hell
     
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  17. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    Yeah - its rapid! First chance I've had to have a play with it and already syspreped a few VMs so I setup some test labs with Sever 2008, 2012 and 2016. Got a big Exchange 2010 to Office 365 migration lined up so need to do a proof of concept first which I can probably run on the laptop :)
     
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  18. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    Bloody hell, datacenter in a laptop! Sounds ace mate, I'd love to invest in some serious kit like that, one day...
     
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  19. Juelz

    Juelz Gigabyte Poster

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    Macbook pro with ssd, 16gb ram.. run parralles on it for all my VM needs. Dont plan to upgrade anytime soon tbh.
     
  20. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    Sounds decent that mate. I'd love a mac. Never owned one
     
    Certifications: VCP4, 5, 6, 6.5, 6.7, 7, 8, VCAP DCV Design, VMConAWS Skill, Google Cloud Digital Leader, BSc (Hons), HND IT, HND Computing, ITIL-F, MBCS CITP, MCP (270,290,291,293,294,298,299,410,411,412) MCTS (401,620,624,652) MCSA:Security, MCSE: Security, Security+, CPTS, CCA (XenApp6.5), MCSA 2012, VSP, VTSP
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