The presentations I presented at Romanian VMUG (VMware User Group) on Dec 17th 2012 - about building a lab environment based on VMware, Microsoft and open source technologies

1. Autolab - demo
CALIN DAMIAN TANASE

2. Agenda
 Why?
 What’s needed?
 Nesting
 Hardware
 How?
 Autolab
 Let’s see it in action – Demo Time

3. Why?
 You hear and you forget, you see and you
remember, you do and you understand (Confucius)
 Hands-on Learning
 Break it & fix it (then repeat the process)
 Get your hands dirty
 Exam study
 Follow examples in study material
 Confirm that what you have read actually works as expected

4. What’s needed?
 Ranging from a single machine(*) to a few racks 
 Hardware
 The “official” line
 HCL/Hardware Compatibility Guide
 The “Whitebox” line (*)
 http://www.vm-help.com/
 http://ultimatewhitebox.com/
 Licensing
 VMware – NFRs (for partners) OR Evals
 Microsoft – Evals / Technet subscriptions

5. Nesting
 With ESXi 5.0
 you may have been able to run 64-bit nested virtual machines
without EPT/RVI support but performance was extremely
poor
 With ESXi 5.1
 VHV now requires EPT/RVI
 Good resource – William Lam’s Blog
 http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/

6. Hardware
 CPU  EPT (Intel) / RVI (AMD)
 RAM – how much is enough?(8 GB dimm/so-dimm
sticks)
 SSD – is it really needed?
 Laptop or PC
 If running under hosted virtualization platform like
VMware Workstation/Fusion – no worries
 If ESXi is bare-metal installed
 Motherboard – disk controller support ; NIC support (optional)

7. How?
 ESXi bare-metal install
 You will need another box/laptop to run your browser/
vSphere Client from
 Better resource utilization (i.e. you will need less hardware to
achieve the same)
 Install under hosted virtualization platform
(Workstation/Fusion)
 You can share between lab workloads and your common usage
 Better mobility if it’s a laptop 

8. Autolab
 “Package contents”
 Prebuilt Open Source VMs
 Shell of other VMs
 Automation for the installation of operating systems
 Automation for applications install into these VMs
 Autolab will produce a nested vSphere 5.0 /4.1
environment
 Router, NAS, DC, vCenter, ESXi hosts, vMA, vCloud, View
2xCS, 1xSS

9. Questions?
?

10. Demo time

11. Stay in touch
 calin@action.ro
 Twitter @calindamian
 LinkedIn http://ro.linkedin.com/in/calindamian/
 Download this presentation from
http://www.slideshare.net/calindamian