Training lab - another take - a lot of individual questions

I know that this question was asked by ad-nauseam in various ways, I don't know, but that I need more of a general answering him. I can dig plug white box on various web sites. This isn't what I'm asking. My real question will follow more of my background first to help it make more sense. Please do not hesitate to rip one of my assumptions below, I don't mind citiciscm if it is constructive!

I want to put in place is a real physical laboratory (and virtual). Please don't "you can run ESXi in Workstation 8" type of answers, I moved far beyond... I now know enough to be dangerous lol!

What I've ever seen is any type of response relative to a bare minimum HIGH AVAILABILITY installation / FAULT TOLERANT hardware laboratory (which may evolve) that is specifically for learning all the vSpehere/ESXi offers 5... vMotion is a big. I want something where I can pull the plug on one box to check if I've developed something that can handle hardware failures. I also want to break the storage and learn how iSCSI at the level of (affordable) material.

Right now, so that you know where I'll be, I execute the following to a laboratory:

1. physics, 1 box which is a server dedicated Windows 2008 R2 AD. A box of generic typical 4 GB Office. It is always static in order to bring down other elements of my lab and re - build immediately. IP: 192.168.1.5

2. 1 generic whitebox which is an all-in-one server and all parts are on the VMWare HCL:

  • 32 GB of Ram
  • 2 - 8Core AMD processors
  • Supermicro motherboard
  • 2 TB of internal hard drives
  • 4 network interface card (although I have problems if I use more than 2, don't know why?) They constantly have power under ESXi4.1)
  • I put a NETWORK adapter to the virtual machine the other for management (although with this configuration, I guess it is useless)
  • I created this box for IP: 192.168.1.2 and it is joined to the domain

This whitebox running the following virtual servers:

  • A second Win 2008 R2 AD Server IP: 192.168.1.6
  • A Windows 2008 R2 vCenter Server IP: 192.168.1.7
  • At all times 2-10 various Windows 2008 R2 or linux servers for other learning software

What I want to do is move away from the monolythic single ESXi box and to get rid of my primary external AD server for the lab. I've got money that I can pass (to a point), so that's what I thought, I need:

  • 3 identical physical boxes, each of which can run 5 ESXi hypervisor. (Amount of VM, I want to run side...) NIC how each box should have? I'm assuming that 1 is the minimum, but there is literally no traffic, so I don't need NIC team only purposes of traffic, or deal with issues of "breach of the cable" regarding HA or FT. But after NIC for purposes of separating the management network, vs the networks vs the learning network VMotion VM is something else, as it relates to the learning of aspects of configuration.

  • I also want to implement the whole field in VM so I'm going to need resources to manage the following (spread over 3-4 VMS per box):
    • 2 servers to Win2008 R2 ads that both DNS and DHCP information
    • 1 Win2008 R2 Server dedicated to vCenter
    • 1 Win2008 R2 Web/SQL server
    • 2-6 additional Win/Linux servers
    • Suppose that each VM server is the installation program expects 2 carrots and the 4 GB of ram

I know with a minimum traffic and how vSphere can share resources I didn't need complete Specifications for the RAM/CPU, but I would like that the system stay 100% direct (though I know slow) if one box fails and the VM on this box have to migrate to the other 2 and strain resources. I hope this makes sense? So each whitebox having 16 GB of RAM and a processor core Intel or AMD 4 would suit? Or a 4 core CPU is not sufficient to manage 4 simultaneous VM, let alone more and not bog until unusable? What happens if the 2 boxes failed? One of these boxes could still handle it all (Yes, I know it would be dog slow, but could he?)

I am also looking something like a Buffalo NAS iSCSI technology or a whitebox self built OpenFiler iSCSI NAS. I wish it were small but fast, as in 6-128 GB SSD drives one perhaps of raid 5 configuration? How many NIC? Only 2? 4?

I currently have a switch 16 port Gigabit, everything works through the unmanaged. Should I replace this with a Cisco switch? more than 1? How many ports?

I know it's a ton of request in a post, so I hope that the general question of too much arc is obvious!

Thanks for any help and advice!

~ Michael

Another comment on the use of server rack for a lab at home vs. office boxes - the rack servers using are noisy. It doesn't bother me (I guess I spent too much time in data centers), but for some the noise level would be too much.

Datto

Tags: VMware

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