How to Build a vSphere 6.5 Home Lab | CBT Nuggets
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In this recorded live webinar tutorial, CBT Nuggets trainer Keith Barker covers how to build a vSphere 6.5 home lab. Get your hands dirty with the latest product from a virtualization industry leader. Learn vSphere 6.5 insights, features and tips to help you train for success.
Any time you need to simulate a production environment or try something new, having a hands-on lab that’s right there and ready to go is a fantastic tool in addition to hands-on labs provided in CBT’s existing courses.
If you were considering building a lab for home use and you wanted to assemble every piece of hardware that would be needed, you’d end up with at least five computers running.
You’d need a computer representing your ESXi-1 device, another physical device for the host ESXi-2. Active Directory Windows server would need to be a computer all its own, as would the vCSA server’s home. Last, the iSCSI or NSFS storage would reside on a device too.
Virtualization is a much more achievable solution. To say nothing of the power or heat that set-up would produce, you’d be looking at significant cost.
Follow along to see how Keith would virtualize the entire lab in VMware Workstation.
00:26: Why Home Labs Are Great
1:58: Setting Up a Virtualized Environment
5:53: Using Logical Networks
7:28: Virtual Network Editor Walk-thru
10:51: Action Items to Get Your Lab Running
✨ Download the Ultimate Virtualization Cert Guide: blog.cbt.gg/i8dn
⬇️ 4-Week Study Plan: Linux+ (XK0-004): blog.cbt.gg/495o
Start learning with CBT Nuggets:
• VMware vSphere 6.5 with 6.7 Updates | courses.cbt.gg...
• VMware vSphere 6 | courses.cbt.gg...
• VMware vSphere 5.5 VCP5-DCV | courses.cbt.gg...
• VMware VCA-DCV | courses.cbt.gg...
Great video, informative and crystal clear.... as all of your videos Keith. Thank you!
Very good just what I was looking for…from Argentina
I wonder who gave this video a thumb down? This video is great and super informative. Great job Mr. Barker!
some people just dont know what they really want and nfortunately they just hit a hate button on youtube....this was a great vid indeed
Thanks a lot!. It showed clarity to a bunch of concepts
We're so glad to hear that, Juan! Thank you for learning with us.
well done keith !!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is a great webinar - very clearly explained and easy to understand - Great Stuff A+++
What is the desktop computer hardware requirement to install VMware and create a home virtual lab to practice on various servers ( Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, Antivirus etc: )
Very good lesson.
Glad you liked it!
instead of workstation, could you use vmware fusion?
Can I ask...how do you get a DHCP server on the 192 network to dish out IPs to the VMs built in the 10.x. networks? Or are you going to have to put a DHCP server into the 10.x vlan?
I have the same question, were you able to figure out? would you mind sharing your solution? thanks!
@@xyx489 Nah. I'm curious again now though!
Great video, but where's the rest of it? ;) I even checked the CBT Nuggets website and there's nothing that looks like a continuation of this?
Same
brilliant introduction, whats next? would love to follow Keith through the whole process
indeedio
This was really good. Thanks
hi what video should we watch next for the installation?
On bare metal, What will be performance of virtual workstaion desktop which needs intense GPU usage for software like Ansys, or CATIA and so on.
Thanks a ton.
I love this tutorial but I want to set it up on the esxi box and not in a vmware solution on a windows pc. How different would it need to be?
Can HA and VSAN be simulated like this?
I'm confused. I thought this was going to use vSphere 6.5, not VMware Workstation.
Why esxi host doesn't allow you to change port group name unless you have a vCenter? I had created multiple port groups with different vlans and trunk those vlans on juniper EX switch, but later on I wanted to change the name of the port group on esxi host but the thing is greyed-out. I had to delete all the port groups and recreate them with different names.
So vmware can force you into buying a center to unlock features. If they keep nickle and dimming people the next stable platform that completes they will lose ALOT of buisness
thank you
I have subscribed to CBT Nuggets because of your 6.5 training. However, No matter what I've tried, my ESXi hosts will only see 5 VMNICS (0-4). I have tried four different machines. Can you please tell me what hardware (PC/Workstation) you are using that allows ESXi to see more than 5 VMNICS when vSphere is nested?
Hi! Great video. Its is possible to run all this lab in one single VM? This VM will live in pro Infrastructure. Thanks.
720p really CBT?
Good video but if I follow this how will I get the computers in my home lab to communicate with hosts in VMnet1, VMnet2, VMnet3 and VMnet4? It sounds like the computers in my home lab will only be able to communicate with hosts in VMnet0?
when you create the vmnet networks in workstation, there is an option to add the adapter to the host computer also.... So on your laptop or desktop where worstation is installed, if you check the network adapters there will be additional adapters created.
if you are using wireless or ethernet, you will have to make sure they are part of your default Workgroup setup
I have a hp proliant g6. I plan on putting 2 hex core xeons (e5645) which will have 6 cores 12 threads. Maybe 48gbs of ram. Should that be enough for me to run a nested virtualized lab? And instead of using a type 2 hypervisor. Can I just use a type 1? Esxi? And nest on a type 1? What is the benefit of a type 2 and why is this recommended? I would think a type 1 would perform better.
I would imagine this method in the video is done purely as most people won't have a server with enough resources to power this properly. If you put a type 1 on yours you're simply removing the need for Workstation (Type 2). Essentially the way in the video lets you install your environment on your own PC, without removing your ability to use your PC as a normal PC :)
can someone give me the link to download vSphere 6.5 for free for my home lab?
Great video. Do you think it's possible to add NSX on top of this? NSX Manager and then NSX Controllers? Perhaps one esxi host per cluster. Wonder if 32GB of RAM is not enough for all of that. And if so, do DDR3 motherboards support >32GB ram.
why not just NAT for managment network? that way you dont depend on the external network
How much will this solution cost?
thanks man!
Hi Keith, I got the points mentioned in this video and ready to go!! How do I proceed with getting the 5 machines in VMware Workstation? Are those steps covered in the new course?
Which Intel Motherboards suport VT/vPro?
The majority of mobos support VT/vPro you have to check the bios to see if you enable it or its automatically enabled. This video is very good and it's much better if you can build your own virtual server. It is not cheap because hardware has become too expensive! but if you have some old 1tb hard drives and buy a ssd hd you can have a real nice setup.
Great tutorials, but I have some questions for anyone who is knowledgeable about virtualisation : )
I have built a home lab with 16 Dell m610 blades in an m1000e (each is 2xCPU @ 2.4ghz/quad with 96Gb mem and 2x120gb SSD raided) ... so that's 1.536tb of RAM, 960gb SSD storage and 128 cores totalling 307.2Ghz at full load. Infrastructure is (dual-redundant) 1GbE passthrough ethernet in slot A, 10GbE in slot B and Infiniband in slot C... only the 1GbE and 10GbE have switches and the Infiniband is a mystery to me and just sits there unused.
Am I right in thinking that I cannot declare a VM larger than a single blade?
Will the free/cheaper offerings of VMWare let me span all 16 blades into a single virtualisation cluster, like a personal Amazon Ec2 cloud?
Also, does anyone know if it is possible to have vSphere migrate VMs between blades while running or would they have to be powered down and migrated manually. I know vCenter does something called vMotion, but it's a bit expensive for a home lab that's only used for tinkering.
I actually don't think I need 16 blades so it will probably be running on 8 most of the time... in fact, I'm toying with the idea of selling the half-height blades and using the money to buy 8x full-height ones to save on electric.
Any advice appreciated, either on the VMWare side or how to get the most out of the hardware.
There's no specific goal here, just trying to get some hands on experience.
Thanks
Hi Gary.... Nice setup m8, really impressive. As you said you can run easily whole lab on the 8th of the blades. Wondering what was the cost for your setup? vSphere is one thing as free ESXi, but if you would like to run more advanced lab (which for sure you would!), I would recommend to register for 1year subcription on vmware evaluation products www.vmug.com/. You would have access to Vcenter, VSAN, NSX, some cloud environemnts as well. If I am correct is is around $200 I believe. Please let me know your thoughts, I have played little bit with vSphere but not on that scale :). To run VSAN I believe you will need to have some additional storage. VMotion you should be able to do as well. How many NICs per blades do you have?
@@HUEFESFS Hi Piotr,
Wow, great suggestion! $200 isn't too bad I suppose... unless it get's me hooked : /
I paid £1600 at auction which my friend says is less than the blades are worth. The SSDs are from a different lot and cost £520 and some still had data on them so somebody somewhere messed up.. They all came from the same limited company (a bankruptcy) untested and with no reserve.
I go to a LOT of these auctions but usually the prices are too high and the equipment too old. Whenever there's decent gear I usually get outbid. Specialist IT auctions are the worst as everyone knows what the items are worth. Luckily, this was listed at a general auction house as "Poweredgem1000 rack computer server untested"
As for connections, the blades came with Infiniband mezzanines and two infiniband I/O modules in the infrastructure slots. There was also two 10GbE 16port passthroughs but I later learned that these would only run at 1Gb (because the blades didn't have a 10Gb mezzanine)
So I went on eBay and bought several 10GbE mezzanines and two more 10GbE passthroughs.
So, right now I have 16x 1GbE (Module A), 16 ports of 10GbE (Module B) and the Infiniband (40GbE? each port? all together? I really don't know) for Module C ... I've taken the Infiniband I/O modules and mezzanines out again to maybe save some electric till know how to use them / have something to use them with.
The memory varied originally 32's 48's and some 64's - But I shuffled the memory about a little and bought some cheaper (chinese unbranded) Registered ECC 10600 modules and staggered them across the channels (thanks Dell memory guide) - besides one bad stick everything is working fine. That cost half the price of buying second-hand dell memory - so I expect I can get the money back when I sell it.
My plan is to use the hell out of this for a year (I'll only be running it about 10-20 hours a week) and then sell it on to recover the cost and buy something else to play with. I find that older generation enterprise gear tends to hold it's price well (sometimes even goes up, if the item is popular and gets EOL'ed leaving people fighting over parts)
I did the same with most of my Cisco gear... built a second-hand networking lab, got my CCNA and CCNP and then sold it all onwards. I don't really 'buy' gear - I usually just kinda 'loan' it from eBay ; ) Saying goodbye is sad sometimes though :O
I'm autistic - and I know I'm probably a bit odd... but I just love tech ; )
I'll definitely check out that evaluators subscription though, it's probably worth it for the support alone... and I suppose there's also a certain _bay_ frequented by _nautical folk with poor depth-perception_ - which might have ... {cough}... evaluation versions... {cough}
@@garychap8384 Well done. I would not expect to see this type of hardware on typical public auction. I never worked with Infiniband. I believe if you would like to connect blades between each other you would need to connect the cable back to back from passthrough module. Not sure if the infrastructure modules giving you an option to connect the baldes between each othe within the modules. I remember HP C7000 was giving you an option to virualize 1 physical connetion to the fabric module into 4 vNIC on the blade.
What is your power consumption? I hope you are not keeping it in your bedroom. :)
@@HUEFESFS It is in my spare room which is used as my lab. Being directly above the kitchen allowed me to run a 220v/32A spur off the kitchens electric socket (my kitchen is all gas, so that 32A for electric oven/hob is uncontended) ... I wired that up a few years back by running a conduit straight up the wall to an upstairs IEC 60309 socket with a breaker. Prior to this I used to just plug the racks PDU into a 13A wall socket - which can actually handle a lot of equipment... in fact, I used a 13A plug to test the unit before moving it upstairs.
BTW, these are about 60kg stripped down (about 150kg loaded I'd guess*) and almost exactly the wrong shape to carry. I could barely carry it at all. I ended up pushing it up the stairs one step at a time, letting it rest - and that was empty.
I still haven't dared to stress test it by running a benchmark on all 16, but I've run all of the blades up simultaneously (staggered start, on 3 PSUs and with strict power limits set in the CMC) ... I'm not quite brave enough to stress test it : O
I don't know if you've ever heard one in person but the youtube videos don't do it justice.
The fan noise in a small unfurnished room is almost painful on startup. It does a short loud fan run on chassis start... and you think _"Holy crap, that's loud!"_ ... but then it settles down for a second and just before you can say _"oh, thats better"_ she comes on with full fan and deafens you ; )))) The sound is like listening to a jet turbine on takeoff. After the chassis has finally finished it's power-on tests and realised there's no fire it eventually calms down to a whine.
To think I used to complain about the 1U poweredge I used to have : )
You can hear the chassis turn on from the other side of the house even with all the doors closed. Luckily there's an air gap between the back of the house and the neighbours or I'd be selling it again very quickly.
I wouldn't recommend anyone in an apartment to use one of these... nor anyone with a spouse. This thing could easily destroy a marriage and turn the best of neighbours into an angry mob.
If I get the courage to run it up to 100% I'll definitely note down the power consumption. The Dell calculator says my configuration will take 3.578Kw (16.6A @ 220v) with the Infiniband plugged back in and running at 100% duty.
At Idle 20% on a single blade it's 442w (2A@220v) with the blade only taking 94w of that (The chassis and I/O modules are surprisingly hungry)
*OMG. Apparently, fully loaded it's over 200kg! That's 441lbs!!!
www.dell.com/calc
@@garychap8384 Hi M8.... Yes please make some videos. I am curious to see this beast in the home environemnt running :) I did not work with the Dell enclosure but with HP C7000 which is exatcly the same solution as yours but from different brand. It is heavy as hell. I did not work with it at home, I think it would eat my utility bill...
I normally play with it in the data center environment so I get used to the sound really or wear ear defenders. The high noise sound is typically during initialization and later during normal operations it is more stable. Whenever we were migrating C7000 enclosure we were stripping it off from all the components to make it possible to remove from the rack by two people. How you connect Infiniband connections? Do you have any external switch or you have just configured Infiniband between the blades?
Thanks,
Piotr
when i try to upload windows server 2016 iso to the datastore it gets held at 0%. why is that and what should i do?
where is the next video continue from this? I don't mind paying for it.
I never realized there were so many networks for the system.
ESXi 6.5 will install (with the right VIB) on a Dell Optiplex 990 with an i5 and 16GB of RAM.
To test vSAN, you really want at least three of those with 1x40GB SSD, 1x100GB SSD, and optionally 1x250GB spinning drive.
To follow the video you could start with one PC and work up; but these can be found for under $200 if you look and are polite.
All of the software you need can be found in free or trial editions.
VMUG Advantage offers a one-year trial of a variety of VMware products for about $200/year and gives you a stackable 20% discount on classes and tests.
This is definitely a good video but should have been mentioned that its from the vSphere 6.0 CBT. Can someone put up a video for a lab build model for those who might have / own a single dedicated Server with vSphere instead of a VMware Workstation.
Hi m8, as far as I understand author is going for VMware Workstation in order to create Virtual Hypervisor on top of lower Virtual Hypervisor. For the model which he presented you will be not able to create that model on vSphere as far as I am aware because vSphere will not allow you to install additional Hypervisor on top of vSphere. Apart of Hypervisor you can still deploy AD, vCSA hosts on one physical machine and vSphere 6.5 Hypervisor. But you will be not able to test vMotion and some other interesting features which giving you vSphere.
There are tons of articles showing how one can install vSphere 6.5 and nest vSphere 6.5 within it to create a similar lab including vMotiion and FT an VSAN to name a few features which still work in a nested environment. jermsmit.com/vmware-vsphere-6-5-nested-virtualization-create-and-install-esxi-6-5/ (or) www.virtuallyghetto.com/2016/10/nested-esxi-enhancements-in-vsphere-6-5.html are some reference sites....
I've got a home server with 192GB of RAM and some SSDs ... building the same environment shown in this video here.. with multiple vSwitches for different networks... works really good..
quaazar3 can you share specs of your home server please?
quaazar3 Great Info and Help. Can I ask do I need to install vmware workstation first and than add the vmware vsphere web client after ?
th-cam.com/video/Hm7kQHI4YnM/w-d-xo.html
Hi Keith, can I have your Email or is there anyway to connect with you.
A homelab would not use a consumer grade PC with consumer grade hardware with Workstation lmao. This video is a joke