Hey All,

Great news guys, I have now got online labs available for you.

Advantages of having this lab is

1. No cost of buying an expensive server and noisy servers.
2. Save Electricity cost.
3. Save time on setting up and troubleshooting. start learning immidately.

What’s included? you will get access to your own cluster with 2 EXS hosts you can connect to the vCenter directly and start practising without wasting any time. I have seen people who can’t setup a lab loose interest very soon, and if you struggle to get the lab running that can put you off too. This is the idea behind my Online lab this lets you start practising without wasting time troubleshooting issues.

I have had a lot of request in the past few months especially after I started the sessions for vSpehre 7 about how to get access to labs.

I would like to keep this for the people who are very interested in learning however they do not have a setup at home to create a home lab. with my experience, we need at least 32 GB of memory to be able to configure a proper vSphere 7 lab.

To give you an idea this is the minimal resources you will need to give to setup a decent lab to practice.

12 GB Memory for vCenter Server

4 GB at least for ESX1

4 GB at least for ESX2

4 GB for Windows AD server ( optional if you don’t want to use DNS) alternate you can use a Linux DNS server too.

8 GB for the setup of shared storage, in my lab I have used FreeNAS to set up shared storage.

So it all adds up to 32 GB, If you don’t have this kind of hardware and you really want to practice, do reach out to me and I might be able to offer you some discount for early birds trying out my virtual datacenter for a small price.

The price is only to cover the cost of the expensive hardware I have put in and the running electricity cost and internet charges. if you want to discuss this you can reach out to me on my email ibrahim@agileops.co.uk

So, you may ask how do I get the access?

Very simple you will just use Microsoft Remote Desktop client from your laptop or computer.

you will get an RDP login to enter the domain name to connect to my label which is agileops.loginto.me. hang on before that you need to contact me so that I can set up your account once I have sent you the details for login you are good to go. you will have full access to your own ESXi and vCetner to practice and learn on your own time. I will send an email with all the instructions on how to login and access the environment.

as you can see the setup below, you can connect to an RDP JUMP server which will allow you to use single sign-on to connect tot he vCenter Environment, it will be ready to use form the point you login.

How to Pay and when will I get access?

first, before you book email me and let me know which lab you need as there are only limited labs I can offer do not pay first.

You can pay after I have confirmed to you select what pass you want I have created three options for you too select.

1. An online Day pass is for 24, and we have two choices RTU which is Ready to Use or BIY Build it yourself.
2. Online Week Pass is for one whole week offering two choices RTU which is Ready to Use or BIY Build it yourself.
3. Online Month pass is for one whole month offering two choices RTU which is Ready to Use or BIY Build it yourself.

you can use paypay to pay easily don’t forgot to mention the lab name as the lab will be created for the specific option. https://paypal.me/agileops

I have also included CISCO UCS Platform Emulator for anyone who wants to learn Cisco Unified Computing system

You can follow one of the YouTube Session to practice one topic or try and configure everything from scratch. This is the best way to learn and I have a very reasonable price for each lab.

If you like it share it with others so that they can benefit it.

I have been asked this question time and time again on how to setup a lab for vSphere to start learning VMware.

In this post today I am going to walk you through how I have created an amazing lab just using simple commodity hardware, which is easy to find and cheap to run with the electricity bills. Especially if you are planning to run it 24/7 as I do.

Hardware – Dell Optiplex 7010

I have purposely used Dell Optiplex 7010 as it is easy and cheap to buy.

Configuring / Billing of Material (BOM)

CPU Intel i7

Memory – 32GB

2TB HDD

CD/DVD

So as you can see this is a simple Dell desktop which you can buy, I have bought this from eBay for £350, The most important thing to remember is the memory, so the more the merrier. In my case, I have messaged the eBay seller and found out the maximum memory that is supported for this desktop which is 32GB and I have got 8 GB X 4 Memory Modules.

Although this looks like a good option sadly, there is no more room for an upgrade of memory as this is the maximum the motherboard supports.

I bought this kit back in Feb 2019, it fit the requirement I had for my basic home lab with vSphere 6.7

Installing ESXi

Once you get the server ready, Install ESX 6.7 you will need to register on https://www.vmware.com and download the ESX 6.7 Update 3 ISO first.

1. register with my VMware portal httpss://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/registration
2. once register login with the credentials

• Once you log-in you will find the downloads

4. click on Trial and Free products.

you will then find vSphere for Download free Trial

You can also have a go at the VMware Hands-on Lab ( HOL) they are very good too.

so once we click on the download link we will get 60 days evaluation for vSpehre 6.7 or any VMware products for that matter. as you can see my Evaluation edition time is compleated

This should let you download your software if you have registered a new MyVMware account.

You can also check out the old products that y you can click on View My Evaluation

Then you will need to burn the ISO to CD or DVD disk to install the ESX hypervisor on the server.

Please follow the blog given below to complete the ESX installation process. although this was done for ESX 6.7 Update 2 the process is the same for Update 3 too.

https://agileops.co.uk/2019/05/02/installing-vsphere-6-7-update-2/

Finally, at the end of the installation, you will find your brand new Hypervisor ready for action. you might need to check if the VT is enabled in the Bios to start nested esx host if that’s what you are planning to do like I have done in my lab.

You can find the full process of Installing the ESX on my YouTube channel where I teach VMware to beginners VMware Tutorial for Beginners | Session 3: installing vSphere 6.7

Then you can start installing the vCetner Server, you can go back to the MyVMware website and download the ISO.

Sometimes you see the error message given below:

You either are not entitled or do not have permissions to download this product.
Check with your My VMware Super User, Procurement Contact or Administrator.

If you recently purchased this product through VMware Store or through a third-party, try downloading later.

just click on Trail Download and you should be able to download the ISO

httpss://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=ESXI670&productId=742&rPId=24857

You can follow my blog Installing VMware vCenter Server 6.7 Update 2

How does my lab look like, well that’s a good subject? please check the screenshot below:

I have the Physical dell Optiplex server which I have highlighted in red. as as you can see I am chewing almost all the memory on the server currently.

I have two VM running nested esx which are highlighted in the demo cluster running around 7 VM’s

I have the vCetner server and vROPS instance running directory on the dell server.

How can I forget I have used FreeNAS for shared storage which is provisioned using ISCSI software initiators. you will find a full process of how to provide shared storage on the YouTube chanal in two parts.

Part1:

Part2:

Hi All today I have created a Youtube video on how to create a home lab its in 2 parts. the part one covers how to prepare your ESX host using commodity hardware Dell Optiplex 7010 for nested ESX.

The part 2 shows how install the vSphere ESX host on the Nested VM.

I have also created screenshots of the full process which you can follow on this post below.

Note that running nested ESX is not supported by VMware hence why this should not be used for production work load.

This is a very important option if we don’t enable this we cannot install the OS.

To install the esx watch the Youtube video here or follow my blog for step by step instructions to install esx.

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Hey all I am in a process of upgrading my existing lab which had been running for a while now. I decided to move to commodity hardware partly to show that we can run a decent lab using traditional hardware.

The new virtual lab will be using Dell desktop Optiplex 7010.

Configuration/ BOM

intel i7 with 3.4 GHz – 8 cores

32 GB RAM – 4 times 8GB 1600 Bus speed

2 TB HDD

100 GB SSD for vSAN LAB setup

Bill of material I paid just under 400£ for this desktop which is a lot less pricey when compare to other options like super micros systems.