How to set up a Home LAB for vSpehre 4 and vSphere5 – part 1

This post if for users who wants to learn or play with VMware vSphere 4, vSphere 5 and vSphere 5.1. Many people wonder how to set up fully functional VMware cluster at home ? Well it’s possible and one don’t need to have two physical servers with shared storage – that would be to expensive. What you can do is buy powerful white box PC, install OS, VMware workstation or VMware ESXi free version and do some configuration. In an examples below all VMware test lab will run on Windows and VMware workstation

What have to be installed  to have fully functional VMware LAB ?

Hardware

1. Quad core processor or Hex Core processor Intel or AMD List of a supported processors
2. Motherboard  supports at least 8GB RAM
3. 8GB RAM 1333Mhz – of course you do not need to have 8GB RAM, in my opinion 6GB is a minimum
4. disks – depends on budget you can have SSD, SATA (at least 7200) in RAID0  or mixed of both SATA and SSD

Software

1. Linux or Windows 64bit OS
2. VMware workstation 9 or VMware player
3. VMware ESXi free version

VMware LAB

1. vCenter
2. 2 ESX(i) hosts
3. shared storage
4. Active Directory – it’s not mandatory to have it AD but it’s good to have it ( one can test AD authentication to ESXi)
5. DNS – optional – easier to manage whole infrastructure with DNS instead edit /etc/hosts

How to start it ?

1. Install OS on workstation
2. Download and install VMware workstation 8 or VMware player 4
3. Create 2 VM’s and install Windows 2008 r2 x64
4. On one of the 2 VM’s configure AD and DNS for lab
5. On second VM’s install vCenter server
6. Create two VM’s follow that instruction if you have older version of VMware workstation
7. If you have VMware Workstation version 8, create ESXi VM is very simple – VMware workstation 8 has ESXi profile in an available Guest OS type. After creation you have to enable hardware vitualization features in VM configuration if you planning run 64bit VMs on virtual ESXi host. How to enable hardware virtualization feature ? Answer you can find by clicking that link http://wp.me/p1LJKy-oF
8. On both VM’s install vSphere ESXi
9. Connect you ESXi to vCenter and create a cluster
10. Now, there is a time for shared storage – download, install and configure OpenFiler iSCSI appliance
11. Connect iSCSI targets to ESXi hosts  a basically Home LAB is ready

[box type=”info”] To avoid error “You may not power virtual machine on a virtual machine” during power on Virtual machine on you brand new LAB, edit virtual machine vmx file and put below parameter. monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = “true”[/box]

Home LAB logical design

[box type=”warning”] Keep in mind VMware vCenter and ESXi evaluation license is valid for 60 days – after 60 days reinstall is necessary

Note if you would like to run 64bit guest OS on your virtual ESXi box VMware workstation is a must[/box]

[box type=”info”] Useful links:

• Hardware specification in my home LAB
• Remote access to LAB
• Tested hardware for ESXi5 and ESXi4 whitebox
• How to install VMware Workstation 8 on Linux
• How to install VMware Workstation 9 on Linux
• Change SID on Windows 2008 R2 Box[/box]