Category Archives: Homelab

My VMware Home Lab Exposure

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A few months ago I was approached to write an article about my VMware home lab that I recently built.  Since I had already been halfway through writing it up for my own blog I took the opportunity to get some exposure for my site and myself.  Well a few weeks ago, my article was published on TechGenix.  What a great way to get my blog and name out there.  For those that don’t know the whole lab story, here’s some quick details.

The Story

I started with 1 Intel NUC and planned to run nested hosts inside a single vCenter.  After doing some research about how others did it, it didn’t seem practical for what I wanted to do. Everything I had been reading showed that after getting the 3 hosts up, you were basically out of resources.  So I bit the bullet and purchased 2 more NUCs, all the exact same specs.  This allowed me to load each with 32GB of RAM, a single NVMe drive (vSAN Caching) and a single SSD (vSAN Capacity).  This gave me plenty of room to run some test VMs for Windows/Linux/Appliances.  So far I’ve been able to test deploy Log Insight, vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations, and plenty of Domain Controllers and Windows Core Servers.  If you’re looking to not spend a ton of money, but get a lab up and running with a fairly small investment, then I would highly suggest a 3 NUC cluster.  And since the 7th gen NUCs have been out for a bit, I’m sure you can find plenty of sales on 6th gen NUCs (or just find someone upgrading their lab).

The Article

A link to the article on TechGenix can be found here: Get your Geek On: Building a VMware Home Lab

SuperMicro vs Intel NUC

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The debate between Homelaber’s recently has been SuperMicro vs Intel NUC.  Both have pros and cons attached with them.  I personally went with the Intel NUC for my homelab creating a single node vSAN.  The article below gives a great run down of both systems for the homelab.

SuperMicro vs Intel NUC

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to William Lam (http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/) and Alan Renouf (http://www.virtu-al.net/) about their exciting USB to SDDC demonstration, they were using an Intel NUC to deploy a VMware SDDC environment to a single node using VSAN. I offered them the opportunity to test out the same capability with one of my SuperMicro E200-8D servers and they took me up on the opportunity. Since then I have been approached by a number of people with requests for information about why I chose to go with the SuperMicro E200 for my home lab over the Intel NUC. I’ve never written a blog before but I thought this might be a good way to “cut out the middle man” so to speak. So here it goes, my reasons for why I chose the…Read More

VMware Social Media Advocacy

Building a Home Lab for PowerCli Testing

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Building a Home Lab for #PowerCli Testing – Notes of a scripter

Building a Home Lab for PowerCli Testing

After taking the PowerCli HOL from VMware, I been thinking of putting together a home lab. I been reading a lot of information about others bloggers using Mini PCs- such as the Intel NUCs, Mac Minis, and even custom built whitebox servers. Unfortunately, being a father of 3 kids means I have to be on a tight budget, and at the same time I don’t want to skimp and have a under powered home lab. I would also like the equipment to be quiet and fan-less if at all possible.

VMware Social Media Advocacy

Licensing Options for your vSphere Home Lab

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Licensing Options for your vSphere Home Lab (via Wahl Network)

Licensing Options for your vSphere Home Lab

Looking to snag VMware licenses for your home lab adventures? Check out what I’m using, plus other options that don’t break the budget!

VMware Advocacy