In this multi-part tutorial series we will learn to create nested VMware vSphere 8 Home Lab using VMware Workstation. We will be building Active Directory Domain Controller, DNS server, VMware vCenter Server, ESXi hosts, virtual firewall appliance (pfSense) and shared storage appliance (Openfiler) for NAS and iSCSI SAN.
The World Today
The world of IT is changing at a rapid pace. Things you have learned few months back may not be relevant today. IT software vendors release newer product versions with significant enhancements and feature changes every few months. Some have a fixed release cycle of six to 12 months, while others make beta versions of their software/product available to general public or a select group of testers. This helps them to collect feedback and improve on their offering.
The Options
Not everyone has access to the latest versions of it in production. The only way to play around with the latest software / products is to have a Home Lab. Its a dream to have a fully physical home lab with server grade hardware, switches, storage etc. But not everyone can afford it. Also the limitation with such lab is lack of portability.
Common Man’s Solution – VMware Workstation Pro
The most common and commercially viable alternative is to build the home lab on a laptop with VMware Workstation. VMware Workstation Pro is the industry standard for running multiple operating systems as virtual machines (VMs) on a single Linux or Windows PC. You can even run nested VMware ESXi or Citrix XenServer hosts on it.
How To Build The VMware vSphere 8 Home Lab
The host system I am using is a Lenovo Thinkpad L480 running Windows 11 having below hardware configuration.
- Intel Core I5-8250U CPU @ 1.60 GHz x 8
- 32 Gigs of DDR4 SDRAM
- Intel Integrated Graphics
- 500 GB Samsung Solid State Drive (highly recommended)
We will be using below software’s to build the home lab:
- VMware Workstation Pro Trial – https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation-pro.html
- pfSense virtual firewall appliance community edition to mimic real world network zones – https://www.pfsense.org/
- Openfiler virtual storage appliance for supporting NAS and iSCSI storage protocols – https://www.openfiler.com/
The Complete Guide
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – The Setup
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Defining the VMware Workstation Virtual Network Zones
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – pfSense Virtual Firewall Installation
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – pfSense Virtual Firewall Configuration
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Configuring Master Domain Controller and DNS Server
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Installing Openfiler – The Shared Storage Appliance
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Installing VMware ESXi 8
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Configuring The Openfiler Storage For NFS
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Configuring The Openfiler Storage For iSCSI
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Connecting ESXi Servers To Openfiler NAS
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Deploying VMware vCenter Server Appliance
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Add ESXi Servers To vCenter Server
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Adding vCenter 8 To Active Directory Domain
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Creating vSphere Distributed Virtual Switches
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Creating Your First Virtual Machine
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Configuring VMware vSphere HA
- VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab – Configuring VMware vSphere DRS
Discover more from VirtShinobi.blog
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Is there option to setup homelab on macos
Unfortunately I don’t own a MAC and hence haven’t been able to set one up myself. But you can definitely install VMware ESXi and vCenter on VMware fusion Pro for MAC