Some “blogging” colleagues posted their home lab configuration on the internet, see the list below:

• Simon S. – VMware ESX(i) Home Lab – Why, What and How? Considerations when building your own home lab
• Duncan – My Homelab
• Gabe – White box ESX home lab
• Jason Boche – EMC Celerra NS-120
• Bouke – v-Water: ESXi overclocked, watercooled
• Simon – vT.A.R.D.I.S – 10 ESXi node cluster on a trolley as demonstrated at London VMUG
• Dave – Whitebox HCL
• Eric’s articles on whiteboxes
• Maish – Install ESX on your Laptop – I had a Crazy Idea
• Ultimate ESX whitebox
• Iomega IX4-200D

I also give it a try and post my test lab on my blog.

I own 3 physical machines that I moved a few months ago to the datacenter at my work in Soest (the Netherlands). With a VPN tunnel from my Cisco ASA 5505 (at home) to the datacenter, my 50/50 mbit ISP, it feels like the systems are near me

 

Server: 1 – ESX4.0 Update 1a

Server: HP ProLiant DL585 G1
CPU TYPE : Quad (4) AMD Opteron 64-880 Dual Core
CPU Speed: 8 x 2,4 Ghz
Memory: 8 GB DDR PC2100
Storage: 4 x 300 GB
2 x HP NC7170 Dual Port PCI-X Gigabit Adapter

VM’s:

Win2008R2 – PDC – DNS – DHCP – IAS
Win2008R2 – SDC, File, Print
Win2008R2 – SQL 2005
Win2008R2 – Microsoft Exchange 2010
Win2008R2 – XenApp 5.0
Win2008R2 – XenApp 5.0
Win2003R2 – vCenter 4.0 Cluster d.m.v. MSCS Node1 (test)
Win2003R2 – vCenter 4.0 Cluster d.m.v. MSCS Node2 (test)
Win2003R2 (32 bit) – McAfee EPO 4.5
Win2003R2 (32 bit) – ISA 2006
Windows 7 (64 bit) – MS Office 2007 – MSN – IRC – VIC
Windows Vista (64 bit) – Test
Appliance: Google Chrome OS – Test
Appliance: m0n0wall – test

Server: 2 – ESX4.0 Update 1a

Server: HP ProLiant DL380 G4
CPU TYPE : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU
CPU Speed: 2 x 3.60 Ghz
Memory: 4 GB
Storage: 527 GB
2x Broadcom Corporation NC7782 Gigabit Server Adapter

VM’s:

Win2003R2 (32 bit) – Windows Terminal server (T.b.v standbydienst / work)
Win2003R2 (32 bit) – Windows Terminal server (T.b.v standbydienst / work)
Win2003R2 (32 bit) – Windows Terminal server (T.b.v standbydienst / work)
Win2003R2 (32 bit) – Windows Terminal server (T.b.v standbydienst / work)
Win2008R2 – File server to share .iso files (MS VLK/HP/Citrix installation files etc).

Server: 3 – vCenter 4.0

Server: HP ProLiant ML350 G4
CPU Speed: Intel Xeon 3.0 GHz
Memory: 2 GB
Storage: 4x 72 GB
1x NC7761 PCI Gigabit NIC

Win2003R2 – vCenter 4.0 (BackupExec 12d, Veeam Monitor, VMware Update Manager, VMware Data Recovery, and local SQL2005 for independency)