Hey all,
I'm in the process of setting up a lab at home to tinker around with some VM's and learn a few things. I already use Server 2008 R2 w/ Hyper-V at work, and also use SCVMM to manage all of it. However, this is a very basic testing environment, and we don't really get into the advanced features of SCVMM.
I have my old box lying around at home which has some decent specs to it - so I thought about making it a VM host. I managed to install ESXi 4.0 via USB to my local SATA HDD, and played around with it for a bit. I got bored, and then installed Server 2008 R2 and added the Hyper-V role. After getting bored with Windows, I'm thinking about switching back to ESXi, and learning how to setup iSCSI.
My initial thought was to setup a few Ubuntu VM's, and learn to use their Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud setup. (looks pretty nifty) In addtion, I'd also like to learn how to use iSCSI, and it seems like Openfiler is a great way to do this. (not sure if it would run on Hyper-V) My specs are as follows:
Intel Core2Duo E6600 (stock 2.4ghz for now, I have stable 3.2 settings though)
6GB RAM
Asus P5B-E Mobo
Onboared Intel ICH8R Disk Controller
1 x 250GB SATA HDD
2 x 1TB Seagate HDD
Unfortunately, it appears that ESXi won't support the RAID function of my ICH8R controller. However, Windows Server 2008 R2 does fine, and one of the benefits to running Windows natively is that I could RAID0 the two large 1TB disks, and then backup my desktop to it. Another thought would be to run ESXi, and then create a Server 2008 backup VM, and just give it a huge virtual disk.
Thoughts?
I'm in the process of setting up a lab at home to tinker around with some VM's and learn a few things. I already use Server 2008 R2 w/ Hyper-V at work, and also use SCVMM to manage all of it. However, this is a very basic testing environment, and we don't really get into the advanced features of SCVMM.
I have my old box lying around at home which has some decent specs to it - so I thought about making it a VM host. I managed to install ESXi 4.0 via USB to my local SATA HDD, and played around with it for a bit. I got bored, and then installed Server 2008 R2 and added the Hyper-V role. After getting bored with Windows, I'm thinking about switching back to ESXi, and learning how to setup iSCSI.
My initial thought was to setup a few Ubuntu VM's, and learn to use their Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud setup. (looks pretty nifty) In addtion, I'd also like to learn how to use iSCSI, and it seems like Openfiler is a great way to do this. (not sure if it would run on Hyper-V) My specs are as follows:
Intel Core2Duo E6600 (stock 2.4ghz for now, I have stable 3.2 settings though)
6GB RAM
Asus P5B-E Mobo
Onboared Intel ICH8R Disk Controller
1 x 250GB SATA HDD
2 x 1TB Seagate HDD
Unfortunately, it appears that ESXi won't support the RAID function of my ICH8R controller. However, Windows Server 2008 R2 does fine, and one of the benefits to running Windows natively is that I could RAID0 the two large 1TB disks, and then backup my desktop to it. Another thought would be to run ESXi, and then create a Server 2008 backup VM, and just give it a huge virtual disk.
Thoughts?