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VMUG Home Labs Deck
- 1. Home Labs Nick Carbone Twitter: @vCarbs_ Blog: http://vcarbs.com
- 2. About Me • Systems Architect for a large mortgage company. • Been working withVMware tech since 2008. • Been running some type of home lab since 2006 when I started to pursue the MCSE.
- 3. About My Lab • Current home lab setup: • (3) Supermicro X8SIL-F whitebox builds • 32GB of memory • Quad Core Xeon • (1) SSD and (1) HDD forVSAN! • Whitebox NAS for NFS and backups.
- 4. Why Build a Home Lab • Career Advancement / Continuing Education • Tech skills have a two to seven year half life (IEEE Spectrum). • Adapt or fall behind. • Certifications • Advanced certifications like theVCAP-DCA are lab based. No amount of book studying is going to prepare you to pass this exam. • Testing • Although we’ve all done it, testing should never be done in production. Leave that for the developers =).
- 5. How to Build a Home Lab • Requirements and Constraints • What do we want to learn and invest time in?Automation,VDI, Cloud, etc.. • How much budget do we have? • Noise / Power / Cooling. Do not ignore these! • Build as you go • Don’t go all out and blow a large amount of cash. • Check out sites like Ebay and Craigslist for deals. • Utilize vendors that you have existing relationships with.
- 6. How to Build a Home Lab • Be Flexible and Creative • Not all ESXi hosts need to be physical. • Try out nested ESXi onVMwareWorkstation or Fusion. • Even things likeVSAN can run in a nested environment!
- 7. Home Lab Components • Lab Components • Compute – ESXi Physical or Nested • Storage – Local, physical NAS orVirtual StorageAppliance (VSA). • Network • Software • MSDN Subscriptions • VMUG Advantage gets you access toVMware licenses! • NFR licenses from programs such as vExpert and Microsoft MVP • Trial Keys
- 8. General Guidelines for a Home Lab • Processors • Most CPU’s should run vSphere • Looks for CPU’s that support virtualization extensions. • IntelVT andVT-D • AMD-V and RVI • Memory • Biggest constraint.Try to find a system that can support at least 32GB. • SSD’s • Extremely versatile in home labs. • Swap to SSD • vFlash Read Cache or PernixData!
- 9. Resources Don’t be a hero, use these to your advantage! • Home Lab Builds: • http://wahlnetwork.com/ • http://bussink.ch/ • http://servethehome.com/ • http://www.labguides.com/autolab/ • Nested ESXi andVSAN: • http://virtuallyghetto.com/ • Training: • http://pluralsight.com • Hands on Labs: • labs.hol.vmware.com/