In-the-Lab: Full ESX/vMotion Test Lab in a Box, Part 1

There are many features in vSphere worth exploring but to do so requires committing time, effort, testing, training and hardware resources. In this feature, we'll investigate a way - using your existing VMware facilities - to reduce the time, effort and hardware needed to test and train-up on vSphere's ESXi, ESX and vCenter components. We'll start with a single hardware server running VMware ESXi free as the "lab mule" and install everything we need on top of that system.

Part 1, Getting Started

To get started, here are the major hardware and software items you will need to follow along:

Recommended Lab Hardware Components

• One 2P, 6-core AMD "Istanbul" Opteron system


• Two 500-1,500GB Hard Drives


• 24GB DDR2/800 Memory


• Four 1Gbps Ethernet Ports (4x1, 2x2 or 1x4)


• One 4GB SanDisk "Cruiser" USB Flash Drive


• Either of the following:
  
  
  
  • One CD-ROM with VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.0.0-164009.x86_64.iso burned to it
  
  
  • An IP/KVM management card to export ISO images to the lab system from the network
  
  
  
  

Recommended Lab Software Components

• One ISO image of NexentaStor 2.x (for the Virtual Storage Appliance, VSA, component)


• One ISO image of ESX 4.0


• One ISO image of ESXi 4.0


• One ISO image of VCenter Server 4


• One ISO image of Windows Server 2003 STD (for vCenter installation and testing)

For the hardware items to work, you'll need to check your system components against the VMware HCL and community supported hardware lists. For best results, always disable (in BIOS) or physically remove all unsupported or unused hardware- this includes communication ports, USB, software RAID, etc. Doing so will reduce potential hardware conflicts from unsupported devices.

The Lab Setup

We're first going to install VMware ESXi 4.0 on the "test mule" and configure the local storage for maximum use. Next, we'll create three (3) machines two create our "virtual testing lab" - deploying ESX, ESXi and NexentaStor running directly on top of our ESXi "test mule." All subsequent tests VMs will be running in either of the virtualized ESX platforms from shared storage provided by the NexentaStor VSA.

[caption id="attachment_929" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="ESX, ESXi and VSA running atop ESXi"][/caption]

Next up, quick-and-easy install of ESXi to USB Flash...