Simon Gallagher Simon Seagrave

 Why would you want to do that?  Best boxes for vSphere  Where to get them  Datacentre in a box (virtualized ESX)  Muti-Node TARDIS cluster Demo  Performance I/O Demo  FT Demo  Cheap/Free SAN Storage  Cheap/Free Networking  Software Licensing  Further Information...

 Because you can  VCP study  Critical home infrastructure (wife & kids 2.0)  IT is a vocation, not an occupation  Production use cases  Automated install testing  Changes (ITIL)  VUM patch testing

 Need:  Cheap  Low-Power!!!  Quiet  Options  eBay an old Proliant  Buy something cheap but less “server”  Find someone else to pay for it (good luck)

 New HP ML115 G5 / ML110 G5  With 160Gb HDD, 8GB RAM, dual/quad core ~£330  ML115 G5 is weapon of choice (AMD x64, FT)  Used HP D530  160Gb HDD, With 4Gb ~£90  ESX 3.5 only (not x64)  Build your own (White-box)  Compatibility issues  updated-homebrew-esx-hardware-list.html updated-homebrew-esx-hardware-list.html  Community supported H/W  vmware.com/resources/ community support/ vmware.com/resources/ community support/

 eBay for old kit   That “spares” pile – but ask 1 st !

 2 x Physical HP ML115 G5 with 8Gb RAM vSphere 4 Servers  1 x HP D530 OpenFiler (1TB iSCSI storage, 60Gb SSD)  Cheap VLAN’able GbE switch  10 x virtual ESXi instances in a HA/DRS cluster  4Gb RAM allocated to each instance (heavy overcommit!)  Software L3 router; Vyatta  Trolley & luggage straps (B&Q)  Approx cost to buy <£1,000  Non-HA version ~£500  Even cheaper if you can recycle the OpenFiler box & Storage

VM Network for guest iSCSI VLAN VM Network for guest vMotionVLAN x Admin Network VMKernel Ports For physical hosts Physical Host Network Config

Virtual ESXi Guest Network VMKernel Ports in ESXi Guest These are really vNICs Note: no need to specify VLAN tag – it is done on host

 It’s bigger on the inside than outside  vMotion between physical host & VM ESXi (Nested VM)  Host Profiles  VMware Update Manager  Nested Virtual Machines (configuration)  FT (FT’d vCenter & Vyatta installation)

 Separate VLAN’s for storage, vMotion, FT  VM Template with multiple vNICs & mounted.ISO  Do not clone installed ESXi/Classic  Physical Host – set vSwitch to allow promiscuous mode otherwise it will not work  Pay attention to max number of ESX hosts to a single shared LUN (or it will stop working)  Nested VM with FT needs special VM configuration & doesn’t work brilliantly  Virtual ESX servers need monitor_control.restrict_backdoor TRUE setting to run nested VMs

 SATA, consumer grade SSD is cost-effective  Don’t expect amazing performance, but good-enough  Beware of iSCSI reservation conflicts  OpenFiler  Free, open-source, wide hardware support  Will also run as a VM (caution with HA testing)  Replication possible if you are a Linux wizz  HP Lefthand Virtual Storage Appliance  Not free  30-day eval available  Fault-tolerance/replication & failover possible  EMC Celerra Virtual Machine  Resource hungry  Free  Fully featured  (..more coming from EMC soon; CLARiiON etc.)  NAS – Drobo/IX StorCentre

 There are no cheap L3 switches  Old L3 Cisco kit is <£100 but not Gigabit (eBay)  Solution  Cheap SoHo GbE switch that supports VLAN’ing  Linksys SLM series ~£80 for 8 GbE ports & VLAN support  Vyatta software appliance router (VM with multiple vNICs  Configure router VM with FT

 VMware software is an expensive problem for the lab  60-day evals out of the box (re-install)  ESXi – but no vMotion/etc.  NFR via employer  Re-using production keys; naughty  The Internet; naughty  No real product activation at present or viable solution to this problem from VMware – No more VMTN subscription!  Microsoft  Mainly for guest VMs or you could try out Hyper-V or Xen if you can’t get an eval license from VMware to use in your lab  Downloadable evals  TechNet Direct – best approach to be legal, and reasonably priced with lots of copies ~£300 unless you go to TechEd then it’s free  Open-Source  Nothing to see here, move along – it’s free!

 Reference  proliant-ml115-g5-quad-core workstation-65-beta-build-91182/ proliant-ml115-g5-quad-core workstation-65-beta-build-91182/  virtual-machines-ssd-sata-iometer/ virtual-machines-ssd-sata-iometer/ Simon Seagrave Blog Simon Gallagher Blog