VMware Workstation - Home Lab for VCAP

[Knubje]

Hi,

I'm thinking of upgrading my home PC to a beast in order to run VMware Workstation and a home lab using AutoLabs (from Labguides). The reason for this is that I'm looking to certify for a VCAP-DCA.
At present, my home rig is 1st gen i7, 12GB Ram and SSD only running on SATA2 due to the age of the mobo.

The recommendation is a phat CPU (that support vPro, VT-d and VT-x), 32GB Memory and some SSD.

I've had a quick spec up and am looking at something like:

Intel Core i7-3770 IvyBridge - £210

ASRock Z77 Pro4-M Intel Z77 - £70

TeamGroup Elite Balck 16GB (2*8) X 2 - £238

Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO - £115

Total = £633

I already have a case, graphics card and all the accessories. Plus, I'll re-use my existing SSD + SATA as extra lab storage.

So, what do people think. Any comments or suggestions? The price I've got there is do-able, but if I could make savings with little impact to the lab I'd take them!

Cheers!

 

[antc]

I would be interested to see what answers you get to this post as I am interested in building such a machine for VMware workstation use also.

 

[Swarfega]

Would have thought what you have would be fine for a lab. The slowest thing tends to be your hard disk as it's a lab though there shouldn't be all that much in terms of read/writes once each machine has completed it boot up. With 12GB of RAM I think you should have plenty of room for idle VM's.

 

[Knubje]

Bit of an update!

I didn't go for the same motherboard as it wasn't in stock and I went for 32GB RAM instead as I wanted the possibility of setting up vSAN in the lab.

I'm running the vSphere 5.5 autolab from Lab guides. He says it can take 2-3hrs to build on his machine and I think I managed it in 1.5-2hrs. The CPU and SSD is a vast improvement on what I had already, given that I am also running the lab from 6Gb/s SATA rather than 3.0Gb/s.

So far I'm easily able to run the DC, vCenter, 3 ESXi hosts, Router, NAS (*2), vMA appliance. I'm going to test it a bit further with a few more VM's but I'm not struggling at all. Starting the lab up is a 2-3 minute job and shutting down is similar.

I could have possibly not spent much, maybe increased RAM and stuck out on the old hardware. Realistically though, I'm impatient and its nice to have the lab respond quickly. When you've been at work all day and fancy a study or learning something new, the last thing I wanted to be doing was wasting my own time waiting for stuff to load!

So far all working great!

 

[Rilot]

Nice one. Glad it's working out.
I run an ESX lab on similar hardware at home. I'm a VCP5 certified consultant myself and having the ability to lab stuff was certainly beneficial.
I've even got SRM working on mine.