Home Lab

My home lab is really to help me learn the technology I am assisting customers with.  I have used it to walk through VMware configuration steps & screens with a customer, write blog posts and as a place where I can break things without impacting anyone.

So far the family CFO has been very understanding of the money and time I have invested.  I try to be a good steward of that credit!

 

Current Home Lab ( Mark IIa – April 2020 )

This version of my lab has a Management node and Compute cluster.

Management Node

MacBook Pro Retina (16gb RAM, 1 TB SSD) – VMware Fusion

    • vCenter
    • DNS/DHCP
    • Ubiquiti Controller

Compute Cluster

This is a 4-node cluster running vSphere 7 & vSAN.

3 nodes are:

    • ASUS H110M-A/M.2 motherboard
    • Intel Core I-5 7400  CPUs
    • 32 GB RAM
    • Intel Corporation 82571EB 1GB NICs

4th node – HP z620 Workstation

    • Intel Xeon CPU E5-2620
    • 96 GB RAM
    • HP NC382T dual-port NIC

Networking

  • Core Switch – Dell PowerConnect 6248
  • Firewall – Ubiquiti Edge Gateway 3P
  • Wifi – Ubiquiti AP-AC-LR (x2)

Storage

vSAN – Hybrid diskgroups

    • Cache Device – SATA Consumer Grade SSD
    • Capacity Device – SATA 1TB spinning disk (x2)

NFS – Synology DS1512+

    • Seagate IronWolf – 4TB (x3) – capacity
    • Samsung 128GB SSD (x2) – read/write cache

Workloads

Other Applications

Notes

  • Using the Macbook Pro as a management node may seem like an unconventional choice.  The display on the MBP doesn’t work so it was easily & cheaply available.  It has a built-in UPS, and KVM with the external monitor as well as easy remote access.  Most importantly – it is very easy for my family to power it back on after a power outage if I am away!
  • The drives and controller in use for vSAN are not on the compatibility guide.  I knew this going in.  It does work well for what I need to do.  The next major generation of the lab will hopefully address this.
  • Ideally the compute cluster would be a matched set.  The HP workstation was from Ebay, and too good of a value to pass up. It doubled my RAM and core capacity for under $400.  The CPU made the cut for the vSphere 7 upgrade; but may not be supported in the future.
  • I have used whitebox-based ESX for a long time.  It does require some research on the HCL for the various components.  One of the changes with vSphere 7 is the evolution of Update Manger to Lifecycle Manager.    Lifecycle Manager has become aware of the host make & model.  It uses this capability to check the HCL as part of the remediation process. This has great potential to identify upgrade problems before a customer implements the upgrade.  This will impact vSphere Homelabs that use hosts based on whitebox components or Workstation class machines that have supported components.  A whitebox machine doesn’t have a make/model.  Workstation class systems do; but generally aren’t listed on the VMware HCL.   This prevents Lifecycle Manager from working with these systems.  I completely understand & support this change – as it benefits VMware customers.  I was able to upgrade my hosts to vSphere 7 manually.  Time will tell how i apply patches…

 

Home Lab .NEXT

Getting the RAM in my compute cluster up to 192gb has been very useful.  Looking forward, I might be upgrading vSAN to all-flash.  This should provide more IOPs as well as using supported components.   Some items on my list to puzzle over

  • MicroTik has an affordable 4-port 10gb SFP-based switch.  They have an 8 port too!
  • If I can stick with the motherboards I have, I will hopefully use the on-board NVME slot on 3 hosts and add a PCI-E NVME card for the 4th.
  • I have resisted going the route of used Enterprise gear.  This is mostly due to the noise/power factor.  However if I have to rebuild my white-boxes significantly it may be more cost effective to go that route (A single large host that I can use to nest environments may be a good option)

Previous Generations

Mark I – This was a single host (core i-7 and 24 gb of ram).  It served me quite well running vSphere for about 4 years.  It is still running to this day – as a desktop computer in my office.

Mark II – March 2019

  • 3-node Compute cluster (whitebox nodes, each has 32gb RAM, core I5 CPU, and hybrid vSAN)
  • Single-node Management cluster (MacBook Pro Retina running Fusion)
  • Synology DS1512+ (12TB raw with r/w cache)
  • Networking – Dell PowerConnect 6428, Ubiquiti Wifi APs and Edge Gateway