Simon Gallagher http://vinf.net

Simon Seagrave http://www.techhead.co.uk

        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 http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/01/ updated-homebrew-esx-hardware-list.html

Community supported H/W

http://www.vmware.com/resources/communitysupport/

   eBay for old kit http://www.techhead.co.uk/hot-deals 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 VMKernel Ports For physical hosts Physical Host Network Config 10.0.0.x

Admin Network

VMKernel Ports in ESXi Guest Virtual ESXi Guest Network 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!

Simon Gallagher Blog http://vinf.net

Twitter @vinf_net Simon Seagrave Blog http://www.techhead.co.uk

Twitter @kiwi_si  Reference   http://www.techhead.co.uk/installing-vmware-esx-and-esxi-35-on-an-hp proliant-ml115-g5-quad-core http://vinf.net/2009/05/21/cheap-vsphere-server/ http://vinf.net/2009/06/07/vsphere-cannot-enable-ft-for-a-nested-vm/ http://vinf.net/2008/05/18/running-esx-35-and-3i-under-vmware workstation-65-beta-build-91182/ http://www.techhead.co.uk/hot-deals http://www.serversplus.com/product.asp?s=SVHEW-VIRTBUN1 http://vinf.net/2009/10/07/performance-update-on-cheap-vsphere-server/ http://vinf.net/2009/11/19/comparing-the-io-performance-of-2-or-more virtual-machines-ssd-sata-iometer/