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Home Virtualization Lab for System Center

C

concomet

n00b
Joined
Dec 25, 2012
Messages
4
Hello :)

I would like to build a home lab for further education, overall I think there will 8 - 10 VMs running. Now I´ve been thinking which Hardware would needed and searching for recommendations.

First my Workstation with Windows 8:
8 GB RAM
128 GB SSD (Systemdrive)
300 GB SATA-drive
Intel i5

My first thougt was to upgrade my Workstation to 32 GB RAM and another 250 GB SSD-drive, but I doubt on I/O when running 10 VMs on the harddrive, even if its an SSD:confused:

So I searched for cheap Hardware and found this Box:
http://shop.delwi-itr.de/shop/Serve...SATA2_Onboard_10/100/1000_RJ_i260_74218_0.htm

My idea was to build a iSCSI target on this Box and use this Server for virtualization and additionally my Workstation to share the workload. I am unsure if I would buy addtionally a high end Raid controller or if I use Windows Server 2012 and create a Storage Pool with JBOD.
I would like to get a performant solution for running 8-10 VMs and keep the cost as low as possiable (of course :))
 
Get an SSD to run them on regardless. Just do it. You'll be glad you did.
 
Oooooo. Please do continue to update this thread or start a new one with your build. And/or start a thread in the Network or OS sub forum regarding the setup of your System Center environment.

Hopefully someday soon I'll start up a SCCM 2012 with Forefront Security lab.
 
I ran a ful SCCM lab on my rMBP with 16gb of ram and 512gb SSD. No problems whatsoever.

Was easily 8 VM's.
 
Yeah thinking more about it your lab VM's will be sitting around idle 90% of the time or more. The main IO hit will be spinning them up or down.
 
You can run several dozen VMs off a SSD without any sort of IO problems, you'll probably want to dedup the drive if you use WS2012, it doesn't support dedupping while the VMs are running so you shut them down to do it. MS says they don't recommend dedupping live VMs but if you read the blog post they made about it when WS2012 was in beta the reasoning was drive space is cheap but seeks are expensive, and it's fairly obvious they only considered HDDs in their decisions, as with SSDs space is expensive but seeks are effectively free. I was able to comfortably run ~20 windows VMs off a 256GB SSD so long as I deduped most of them every 2-3 months and put any bulk storage VHDX's on spinning disks. Took 3-5 minutes from VM host power on to all 20 VMs being ready, where previously on HDDs it was closer to 10-15 minutes for ~10 VMs
 
-Dragon- so you can shut down VM's in 2012, Dedupe the volume where the VHD's are stored and then bring them up and still have that space savings? So it actually dedupes chunks of the VHD?
 
Thanks for the replys. Yes dedup is a very nice feature in 2012 and I´ll definitely use it.
For my Lab I´ve decided to build a new small Server, cause I´ll run it 24/7 and also use it as HTPC (good reason for me to buy a new TV :D). Low power consumtion and volume are relevant, cause it´ll stay in my livingroom.

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1265Lv2 (low power consumtion, good performace, expensive :-/)
Mainboad: ASRock Z77 Pro4-M Intel Z77 (I´am unsure, if this is perfect for my implementation. I searched for µATX with 32GB + HDMI. Maybe there are better recomendations?)
RAM: 32 GB Kingston ValueRam non ECC
SSD: 64 or maybe128 GB Systemdrive
SSD: 256 GB Datadrive
HDD: 2x 1 TB Datadrive
Case: Fractal Design NODE 605
PSU: be-quiet! CM L8 430W
 
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gunbust3r said:
-Dragon- so you can shut down VM's in 2012, Dedupe the volume where the VHD's are stored and then bring them up and still have that space savings? So it actually dedupes chunks of the VHD?
Click to expand...
Yes. I don't exactly run off just one SSD any more but my VM drive has 194GB used but the folder properties say 951GB for total size, and I haven't done a full dedup in quite a while (my current solution lets me get away with deduping less often). That's 194GB total used with ~32GB of that going to VM saved state space that WS2012 requires you to keep if you have the VMs set to "save on shut down"
 
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