December 17th, 2009 
Simon Seagrave 
Creating your own full featured VMware vSphere lab for either home or work does not need to be as expensive as you at first think. Sure, there is the initial outlay for the hardware but after you have purchase/acquired/liberated this you will be in good shape (depending on the specification of your hardware and whether it will run ESX/ESXi) for some time.
In this ‘build you own VMware vSphere lab’ series I will be co-posting with Simon (yes, two of us called Simon 
) from vinf.net. I will cover the topic parts 1-5 below along with 12 and Simon (the other one) will take it from there covering topics such as running nested ESX instances and VMware Fault Tolerance (FT). This series will provide a step by step guide from the basics of the hardware configuration right, installing and configuring shared storage through to running Lab Manager on your home lab.
The intention is to release these posts over a period of time though we thought we’d map out the journey so you can see what’s coming up which will hopefully whet you appetite for building your own VMware vSphere lab either at home or work.
Part 1: Lab Overview (TechHead) and vinf,net Lab Series Overview
Part 2: Lab Hardware Configuration (TechHead) – Coming Soon!
Part 3: ESXi Installation & Configuration (TechHead) – Coming Soon!
Part 4: Shared Storage Installation & Configuration
– EMC Celerra (TechHead) – Coming Soon!
– HP LefHand (TechHead) – Coming Soon!
– StarWind iSCSI SAN (TechHead) – Coming Soon!
Part 5: Networking Configuration: VLAN’ing & Jumbo Frames (TechHead) – Coming Soon!
Part 6: VM’ed ESXi (vinf.net) – Coming Soon!
Part 7: VM’d vCenter; auto start-up of VMs (vinf.net) – Coming Soon!
Part 8: VM’d FT and FT’ing vCenter VMs (vinf.net) – Coming Soon!
Part 9: FT on the ML115 series – benchmarking Exchange VMs (vinf.net) – Coming Soon!
Part 10: VM’d Lab Manager farm environment on a pair of ML’s (vinf.net) – Coming Soon!
Part 11: VM’d View 4 farm environment on a pair on ML’s (vinf.net) – Coming Soon!
Part 12: Backing up your ESXi lab (Both) – Coming Soon!
Why build a virtualization lab?
Building your own virtualization lab either for home or work can serve many purposes from providing an ideal test bed for those of you training for an exam, wanting to test a new application or utility or just wanting to become more familiar with building and running your own mini server infrastructure.
Gone are the days where running a multiple server lab environment meant having a number of physical server whirring away creating costly electricity bills, taking up plenty of space and not evening mentioning the noise and heat generated. As you no doubt know the beauty of server virtualization is that you can now run multiple VM server instances on a single piece of server hardware greatly reducing many of the negative points mentioned above.
From this single server you are able to run multiple operating systems (OS), virtual appliance (VA) firewalls and network switches and even nested instances of the hypervisor itself (ie: VMware ESX).
With the significant processing power found in modern processors and the reduced cost of high capacity memory there has never been a better time to build your own lab with as little as one server or decent desktop PC.
On with the show…
So hopefully I’ve now sold you on the virtues of running your own virtualized server lab and have sparked your interest to find out how to create your own.
Here’s an overview of the hardware and software that will be used in this vSphere lab series:
Hypervisor
For these postings we will be using the latest version of VMware ESX available at the time of writing, this being ESXi 4.0 Update 1 (U1) along with other components of the VMware vSphere suite. One of the reasons ESXi was chosen over the full-fat ESX version was that only ESXi can be installed onto a USB pen drive allowing us to use 100% of the internal disk space of the servers as shared storage for the VMs. Also as the service console portion of ESX is going to be replaced in a future version of ESX now is a good time to familiarise yourself with the remote command line (RCL).
Server:
For those of you that have read TechHead before already know that I favour the HP Proliant ML110 and/or ML115 entry level servers for use in my own virtualization test lab. My reasons for this are:
Reliability: I like HP kit as it has proven to be very reliable in my years of being in IT. I have been running two ML110’s and two ML115’s over the last 18 months both of which have never had a hardware failure despite me working them hard at times. I have only heard of one, what I’d call serious hardware failure on them this being on Simon Gallagher’s ML115 where he had a motherboard failure – though this was resolved after HP had shipped him a new replacement board.
Cost: This is probably the most important factor for many in the server selection process. The ML110 and ML115’s have fluctuated in price, at least here in the UK, from a low bargain price of £80 each about 18 months ago through to their current price of around £190 – which offers pretty good value for money when you look at the specification of the server. I’ve found that the prices from the various online vendors are usually pretty much the same though have warmed to using ServersPlus as they have consistently proven to provide the most competitive pricing and good pre and after sales support. As a result I recommend them to others and have arranged a free delivery deal for TechHead readers – as any savings in this current climate has got to be a good thing. Check out my ‘Hot Deals’ section for decent offers that I am told about or see – I try and keep this updated regularly.
The HP ML115 has also proven to be cheap to run with an average load consuming between 80-95 Watts of power – at least it does in my current VMware lab.
Compatibility: On the whole the ML110/ML115 although never being on the VMware ESX hardware compatibility list (HCL) has proven to be on the whole almost fully compatible with VMware ESX. In the early ESX 3.5 days there were issues with some of the onboard network controllers though in later 3.5 releases this was no longer an issue. The largest bug-bear, as you’d likely expect, has been around the storage controller compatibility though across both models of server things have been pretty stable since the ESX 3.5 U4 release. With the release of VMware vSphere and ESX 4.0 both G5 models of the ML110 and ML115 now work 100% – although they are not officially on the HCL which may be a consideration from a VMware support perspective if you were thinking of putting these servers into a live production environment.
Here’s a video I put together that gives you a brief overview of the HP ML115 G5:
Portability? Just add wheels!
Also with the relatively small form factor of the ML115 you can also transport it much easier than a full sized enterprise level server. An example of which can be seen with vinf’s vTARDIS.
Other options: Another popular method is to build your own ESX white box. You can actually end up building quite a powerful and cheap ESX host if you can put together the correct ESX compatible parts. There are some good sources out on the web that maintain active lists of what motherboards, disk controllers and network cards have been proven to work with the different versions of ESX. Here are some of these sites that you may want to take a look at if considering building an ESX white box solution.
Others such as vinf.net have looked towards a desktop white box solution such as the HP D530 for hosting their ESX environment.
Networking:
For my networking hardware in my virtualization home lab I use a pair of eight port Linksys SLM2008 gigabit switches. The reason I use two is that I need this many ports if running most of my ML110 and ML115’s with shared iSCSI storage and wanting to have dedicated network connections for vMotion and FT traffic, etc. I also have a main PC from which I manage my environment which also requires a port or two. As I posted here I have found the Linksys SLM2008 switches to offer great bang for buck for use in a lab type environment. It has the necessary features such as VLAN tagging and Jumbo Frames which do come in useful when you start wanting to implement the more enterprise level features with your ESX/ESXi hosts.
Storage:
To use many of the useful features within VMware ESX such as DRS, HA and FT you’ll need shared storage. For the purposes of this series I have decided to walk onto the storage vendor parking lot and kick a few tyres. The three vendors (EMC, HP and StarWind) I have chosen all have storage products suitable for virtualised environments that I have wanted to take a more in depth look at for sometime now.
All three of these storage vendors offer products that can be run as a virtual appliance which will either pool and share the local disk of the ML115’s or share out the local disk to ESX and then replicate it between both of the ESX nodes (ie: ML115’s). These are a couple of different methods for presenting shared storage so it’s going to be fun to go into more depth with them in the lab.
Here’s a summary of the storage virtual appliances I will be reviewing and using:
- EMC Celerra VSA
- HP LeftHand VSA
- StarWind iSCSI SAN Virtual Appliance
The good news is that if you are following this ‘build your own vSphere lab’ series by constructing your own home or work lab you can download fully working evaluation copies of all of these products to which I will be providing the links.
The End Bit
I hope you all enjoy this build your own vSphere lab series. I look forward to writing the posts and as always your feedback, suggestions and comments are always most welcome.
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My name is Simon Seagrave and I am a London (UK) based Senior Technology Consultant and vSpecialist working for EMC. 
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Amazing post, looks like its going to be a great series of posts, cant wait to read the rest. Should have my own pair of ML115′s soon !
Great post Simon. Looking forward to read the next chapters!!
Excellent article Simon&Simon
looking forward to the rest..!
I am interested in the networking part with the SLM2008. Specifically I would like to know how you would set up VLANs, so that you can isolate different VMs, but still allow them internet access.
Can you create one vSwitch with two port groups, Department 1 (VLAN ID 10) and Department 2 (VLAN ID 20), make sure that ID 10 and ID 20 are isolated, but allow all VMs in both access to the internet?
Thanks
Hi Simon,
This is a great post, looking forward to the series….
Devang
Hi Devang,
Thanks for stopping by and the comment.
I look forward to putting the series together – should be fun!
Cheers,
Simon
Thanks Aleks. I look forward to writing – should be fun
I’ve also added your site to my Virtualization blog roll.
Cheers,
Simon
Hi cookieme,
Yes, this possible but you would need a layer 3 switch and a router (both with 802.1Q for the VLAN tagging) to make it work. The router would have an internet connection going into it and then from here you’d connect the router to the layer 3 switch with the VLANs configured.
Packets from the VMs out to the internet would hit the switch on a particular VLAN and then on out to the router (which would be configured up as the gateway?). From the router the traffic would be passed out to the internet. When the traffic is returned from the web server out on the internet it will pass it back to the IP of the VM. It will first hit the router which will be aware of the different VLANs which will pass it off to the switch and then in turn the VM. I’m definitely not an expert in this area so if anyone knows of any other methods please let us know.
Hope this helps (and is correct, lol).
Cheers,
Simon
Thanks Kris. I hope to make a start over the Christmas break
Cheers,
Simon
Thanks Al – when are you getting you ML115′s? You may want to get in soon as I saw an HP reseller stock list yesterday (the company I work for – although not a reseller gets these lists through) that the ML115 G5′s are aparently in low stock which means they are probably winding them down for the inevitable ML115 G6 release. When this happens the price of ML115 G6 (like the ML110 G6) will be at least 50% more, I am guessing, than the current G5′s.
Thanks Simon! I didn’t think it would be that complicated. Getting a layer 3 switch and a router is quite expensive.
Thanks again and Merry Christmas!
Hi,
Check out this post on the Cisco forum – this confirms the setup you’d need. Sounds like the SLM2008 will do the business – as I thought you just need a 802.1Q router.
https://supportforums.cisco.com/message/632961#632961
Cheers,
Simon
Thanks for the link! Yeah looks as if I’d need an additional device, i.e. router.
Assuming this is just for VMs, another option is to implement this using a virtual router like vyatta (which is also free
) – which is the approach I used in my own virtual lab: http://www.techhead.co.uk/vmware-vsphere-esx-install-configure-manage-preparing-your-test-lab
Hi Simon (x2),
Looks a great setup. That trolley is fantastic – I love it.
I’ll be interesting to see how much of this can be converted in a totally virtualised environment. Imagine carrying a whole lab like this on a USB key – a couple of virtualised ESX hosts running a shared storage VM, using VMware workstation’s network management to create some virtual networks.
Forbes
I’m building my vSphere home lab now and have a quick question. On which machine do you install the vCenter server? The ESX4 obviously installs on the ML115’s, but do you have another machine, such as your laptop or a separate workstation for the vCenter server’s role? If so, can it be a normal workstation, or does it require the hefty CPU and RAM that the ML115’s have?
Hi Jeffrey,
You can install the vCenter Server on any server you like pretty much. This can be a seperate physical server, workstation or even a on a VM running on the ESX host(s). The size of the server on which you run it on really depends on how many ESX hosts you’ll be managing. As you mention it is for your home lab I’d recommend running it as a VM in your ESX host, eg: W2K3/W2K8, 2GB RAM, 1 vCPU – this will more than suffice for most lab environments – you will need more if you are going to run the DB on the same server/VM. The official line on minimal requirements is 2 x CPU/vCPU, 3GB mem – though as this is a lab environment you can get away with a little less. For large lab roll-outs apply more resource as needed.
Hope this helps
Cheers,
Simon
Thanks a lot Simon,..I did the same for you..so now you have 300 milion and 70 viewers..because I want to do my share! (quote from Eddy Murphy’s “Raw”)
Just to point out..don’t consider myself a virtualization blogger..I just blog about all the crap I come across
Best wishes to you and all the other techheads out there..!
based on what you describe it looks like this server will work, what do you think?
http://www.onsale.com/p/5541594?dpno=7836716&store=onsale&source=BWBGoogleBase
Hi Trevor,
Yes, I have one of these ML115 G5′s and it works just fine with VMware ESX(i). Make sure you also buy some extra memory as the 1GB DIMM that comes with it won’t be enough to install ESX(i). Just remember that the memory that comes with the server is of the ECC variety and can’t be mixed with non-ECC memory which is the type that you’ll fine most places and is generally a little cheaper. Non-ECC memory will be fine for work/home lab environments.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Simon
Looking forward to the rest of this series.
Thanks for this project. Looking forward to the upcoming posts! Just got my ML115 from serverplus. =)
Looking forward to the next article. Just bought an ML115 and didn’t know about this site. I googled ML115+vmware and found you though and I’ve managed to get up and running reading your articles. Thanks for sharing. Keep up the good work.
Next part of the VMware ESX(i) lab series will be coming soon – unfortunately I’ve had a few unexpected things drop in which has held things up. Watch this space!
Cheers,
Simon
Update coming soon!
[...] Building your own VMware vSphere lab – A step by step guide. Part 1 – Lab Overview (TechHead) [...]
Simon, I hope you have not forgotten us, your devoted followers!
You rock man!
Hey there
Thanks for the message – soooooooooooooo sorry to you all in the delay in getting the rest of the lab articles out to you. The last 3-4 months have been manic leaving me with little spare time unfortunately, ie: finishing one job, writing chapters for the new book, and starting a new job.
Things should hopefully get back to normal shortly where I will start to get my evenings and weekends back again. I will then get write up and publish the remainder of the posts which I am relaly looking forward to doing.
Watch this space and apologies again for the delay.
Hello everyone,
Great post by the way Simon, it was my inspiration to setup my own home lab
Any help with the below issue would be much appreciated:
I have 2 HP ML115′s (1354) with 2 NIC’s on each and a Cisco SLM2008 switch (S/W version: 2.0.0.10) both are running ESX 4 update 1 EVAL version. For the time being i’m using the default 192.168.1.x range of addresses. The problem is that i can’t seem to get the VLAN settings correct.
From the SLM2008 switch i have port 1 connected to my Netgear 3700 router. Port’s 5 and 6 are connected to ESX host 1 and ports 7 and 8 are connected to ESX host 2.
The idea was to have ports 1, 5 and 7 on VLAN 2 (For iSCIS and service console traffic)
And ports 1, 6 and 8 on VLAN 3 (For VMotion, Fault Tolerance and VM Network traffic)
And then have ports 1, 5, 6, 7, and 8 on VLAN 4 (Which would be the default internet VLAN with all ports as a member)
If i don’t have any VLAN’s on the switch and the VLAN Port Table is left with the default settings everything works fine. I have connectivity to each host from my laptop and NTP works fine. As soon as i add a VLAN into the switch and set that specific VLAN on the ESX host during installation i can no longer set a NTP server nor can i ping the ESX host from my laptop.
Am i doing something wrong?
Thanks,
Pal
Hello Simon and Simon! I recently saw Simon G. speak at the BriForum conference in Chicago about setting up a home lab using ESXi. I just ordered a HP ML115 G5 and 4GB of memory from newegg and can’t wait to get it set up. Any ideas on when the next article with be posted? Thanks!
Hi Jason,
Thanks for calling past and leaving a message.
I spoke to Simon G recently and we’ve agreed to get the lab series back up and running again… It’s been a crazy 6 months or so for both of us though we are really keen to continue with the series as promised.
Sorry to my readers for the delay in getting the next update in this series published.
All the best,
Si
Hi Pal,
Apologies for the delay in replying to your post – it’s been a crazy-busy month so far.
Really glad you have found my posts useful and it has inspired you to build your own vSphere lab – you’ll have a lot of fun with it. I appreciate it has been a few weeks since you left your message, have you resolved the issue?
I have a couple of quick questions:
- Is your laptop with the vSphere Client connected to the NetGear 3700 router?
- Do you have a iSCSI based storage appliance also attached to the NetGear 3700 router or is it Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA), ie: a storage VM such as OpenFiler VM edition?
Hope to hear from you.
Cheers,
Si
Hi Simon,
Unfortunately i’m still having the issue, i’ve just setup the lab without any VLAN’s at the moment.
The laptop i’m using to manage the ESX hosts via vSphere client connects to the Netgear 3700 router wirelessly.
And i’m using a Virtual Storage Appliance which is hosted on the ESX host.
Thanks,
Pal
Hi Pal,
I have started putting together my next (very overdue) lab post about setting up VLANs on a switch in a vSphere lab environment. Bit busy at work at the moment though hope to have it done in the next couple of weeks.
Hopefully this should help.
All the best,
Simon
[...] Building your own VMware vSphere lab – A step by step guide. Part 1 – Lab Overview by Simon Seagrave (TechHead) [...]
[...] Building your own VMware vSphere lab – A step by step guide. Part 1 – Lab Overview by Simon Seagrave (TechHead) [...]
[...] is live labs you need to know how to drive the tools. If you don’t have a lab now check out TechHead’s guide or take some inspiration from the awesome vTardis to get great nesting going [...]
Did the rest of this series of Lab articles ever get published?
I am too looking for the rest of the Lab article. any ideas?. thanks in advance.