Here is a video detailing my home VMware vSphere lab including servers and storage…
Note: I forgot to mention in the video, the Intel Quad Q6600 shown in the video DOES run vSphere 4 as well so it is a compatible whitebox. It uses the MSI7450 BIOS.
Feel free to embed this video in your blog! You can get the code to do that by pressing the embed button on the video!
For more information on home labs and whitebox servers, listen to the VMware community roundtable episode that covers this topic.
David Davis (CCIE #9369, vExpert, VCP, VCAP-DCA) has been in the IT industry for 20+ years. He has authored hundreds of articles, 10+ video training courses, and co-authored one book. Learn about David's certifications, video courses, and where you can find his content on our 
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi David,
Nice video on your vSphere home lab. I just wanted to mention that you may be able to download an updated BIOS from Sony which will allow you to enable VT. I ran into the same problem trying to run a MAC OSX VM on my Sony Vaio with a P8600 (requires hardware VT to be enabled) and after a little bit of looking around discovered that Sony had released an updated version of the BIOS. Of course this may not hold true for all models (mine is a VGN-SR190), but may be worth checking out.
-Josh Coen
Hi david,
NIce lab. I have a question. I dont have physical EsX servers. all i need to do is to run esx in vmware workstation.. will it be possible to practice all the labs same as the real labs in workstation and also will migration of VM supports in workstation.bcoz no iSCSI or NFS i have only local storage…
Hi Madhu,
Thanks for watching and for visiting my website!
Yes, you can practice most of all of the vSphere features in workstation with the exception of maybe FT (fault tolerance). You will, however, need an iSCSI SAN or NFS NAS but the good news is that those can be run in Workstation too.
Here are some articles I wrote on using OpenFiler as your SAN/NAS with vSphere:
http://www.petri.co.il/use-openfiler-as-free-vmware-esx-san-server.htm
http://www.petri.co.il/connect-vmware-esx-server-iscsi-san-openfiler.htm
If you have more questions, let me know.
Thanks again!
-David
Hi David Thanks for your sharing.
1.I would like to know that can we practice to create a virtual machine on the Esxi4 server which one is installed in VMware workstation..because it was showing some error when i tried before. and
2.can we use the open filer to check the fail over cluster feature in Windows Hyperv environment.
Thanks
Mahadevan
Hi David,
like cisco’s “rent-a-lab” concept, is there a remote “rent-a-lab” for vSphere testing or training.
Hi David,
My query is regarding Bare Metal ESXi installation.
Suppose I have a 250GB harddisk and i want to install as a Bare Metal installation on my pc..is there any provision to give ESXi only 50GB of that total space, so that other space can be allocated to virtual machines…
or how is it, as its confusing me a lot….
thanks
-pinaki
Hi David,
I have 1200BTS server mother board+16 GB Ram+ 1 TB HDD+ xeon processor
how to implement DRS and FT , please give me video material.
I have a question, I have two physical desktops that I would like to install vsphere 5 on. if I use one server and install VMware workstation on it I understand I can nest VM’s and install ESXi on another host but do you think I can add the second physical host to the VMware workstation environment?
Hi Madhu
For DRS and FT videos, I would recommend my video training course on vSphere 5 at http://www.TrainSignal.com (available with a free 3 day trial)
Thanks for visiting!
-David
Anonymous,
To add the second host, you they would just talk over the network. One server could run Workstation with nested ESXi VMs and vCenter and DNS/AD. The other server could run ESXi directly on it where you could get better performance for any VMs you run inside.
Hope that helps!
Thanks for visiting,
David