Macbook vSphere Lab

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Vader

Supreme [H]ardness
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Dec 22, 2002
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I am wanting to build a vSphere lab on a Macbook Pro with the following core specs:

i5 2.5GHz
16GB Ram Upgrade Corsair Value Select from newegg
256GB SSD
750GB+ Hybrid Seagate (this will be housed in a superdrive hd replacement mount)
Mac OS X Lion
VMware Fusion

I would like to run the following on Fusion:
1. vSphere Appliance
2. 2008 R2 AD/DNS
3. 2 x Virtual ESXi 5.x Hosts
4. Windows 7 Pro (Stripped with only essentials to run the vShere Client, etc)
5. Uber VSA
6. Cisco UCSM Emulator
6. Possibly a VCD appliance and vShield MGR with two vShield VM's on each Virtual ESXi host or VIEW

I'm definately going to be cutting it close with memory, of course Oversubscription will have to happen here. What do you think the feasibility of doing this is? Am I dreaming here? I really don't want a 15" Laptop to carry around. I would like to assign 10-12GB of mem to the vESXi hosts.

I know some are doing this but how is it working out? I would imagine it would be slow.

I still can't believe that there isn't a vSphere client etc for Mac OS yet...if I could cut out a Windows 7 VM I could free up additional memory. Memory is a killer here..if the mac mini could get up to 32GB of memory, I would just get one of those to bring to client sites.
 
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SpaceHonkey said:
As he said - to demo at client sites.

I don't see why it wouldn't work as long as you're not expecting extreme speed. People do this all the time...
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poor single network card :(

Ok idea just think you could build a micro lab and bring that around.
 
Well, here is the deal, why would my network card get hammered really at all if it's all internal? Wouldn't it just be MGMT? The lab would be internal on a private network and the only communication I would need would be from a Win7 VM running the vSphere client. Everything else should remain internal.
 
Yeah. I used to do this a lot...and I know several people that still do labs on their notebooks. SSD and more RAM are key. But it can work really well. Now I just OpenVPN back to my home lab for some demos and use the Varrow demo labs for other things.
 
Oh...I'd just run vCenter on Windows and use that for the VI Client too. The vCenter Appliance is a pig.
 
Yeah..I noticed..8GB RAM...gahh... The only thing that sux is Dell Equallogic or Compellent doesn't have a VSA..then I could basically "emulate" our solutions.
 
You can run the appliance on less...usually 4GB. But you can run vCenter on Windows in 4GB and consolidate that down.
 
. Now I just OpenVPN back to my home lab for some demos and use the Varrow demo labs for other things.
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That will be one of my goals, to get a small UCS lab up and going by the end of the year running VMware products among other things. They only have a few c series and their blades are the Dell m1000e's.
 
I think so. I have the 500GB (just bought the 750GB version) version running currently in my laptop for my VMs and there is a definite response difference for the better over my Seagate 320GB, 7200 rpm drive it replaced. The CrystalDiskmark for my 320 and the 500GB are about the same but system responsiveness is totally different. Not SSD different, but noticeable different.
 
I recently just picked up a 512 SSD so I've started building out some crap. I would have loved to have done this with one of the new MBP's capable of 16gb.

I'm getting by just fine with a W7 mgmt machine, 2 vESXi hosts and a P4000. Everything else runs nested virtual, can't say it's always amazing; however, the SSD made massive improvements.
 
Big reason I went with 16GB on my new rMBP was in case I wanted to run VMs for a lab again.
 
subscribed...

more ammunition to get my company to pony up for a new laptop for me when the new elitebooks get released. :)
 
Just purchased a Macbook Pro 2011 with Applecare for a killer price and ordered the memory upgrade, extra harddrive mount, and the Segate Hybrid 750GB drive.
 
We'll see how it goes..Anand did a good review and it performed very well. If it doesn't work out, i'll get an SSD later. $400 for a 512GB SSD...just can't do it even if I had the funds.
 
My 512 m4 has taken all of the pain away from running a Mac-based lab. Even my w7 VM was dreadful to use on its own before. But then again I was also running a 5400.
 
2.2GHz i7 Macbook pro with 16GB RAM and 512 vertex 4 sitting on my desk.
Couple of windows, a few small Linux etc and its solid.
Don't get me wrong if your running intensive things it slows down - but for a basic VM cluster demo It should work.
 
What's the point of hybrid SSD for a lab setup? I understand a regular SSD for the increased IOPS, but don't see the point of a hybrid HDD for VMs. Seems to me you'd be so much better off just using the internal SSD.
 
What's the point of hybrid SSD for a lab setup? I understand a regular SSD for the increased IOPS, but don't see the point of a hybrid HDD for VMs. Seems to me you'd be so much better off just using the internal SSD.
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It's higher capacity and better performance than just a standard spindle at less than 1/2 the cost of a 512GB ssd.
 
Vader said:
It's higher capacity and better performance than just a standard spindle at less than 1/2 the cost of a 512GB ssd.
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Better performance for what? There's almost no IOPS gain which is 90% of what matters for hosting VMs. I guess you get faster reads, but that shouldn't be a bottleneck. In terms of $/IOPS it seems a poor investment.

You'd be better off to use the hybrid as your OS drive and put the VMs on the SSD.
 
Yeah. That hybrid isn't going to cache what you want in to the SSD portion, most likely. Try it and see...but your data set is going to be much larger than the cache when you start booting VMs.
 
From what I read, this drive can cache writes as well i'll have to validate, firmware was supposed to be released to allow that functionality.

I don't think I can get away with another 256GB SSD for what I want to do....and again, i'm not spending $400 on a 512GB SSD.

If it doesn't work out, I can always reuse it in another laptop and buy a 256GB SSD and live with it until prices come down for larger capacity SSD's.
 
Ok..well..looking into this more....I cancelled my Seagate Hybrid in favor of a Corsair 3 240GB SSD, onsale right now at newegg. For $40 more I get awesome SSD speed, I hope I don't regret the capacity as I don't think I will because this is just taking a small lab around to client sites, and I can easily run a couple of small XP vm's and/or a couple of Linux VM's.

I'll update the post as I make progress. I"m sure i'll thank you guys for your input on that SSD for my UberVSA and vSphere Datastore.
 
Macbook has arrived...installed my OS SSD..fresh install of Snow Leopard, VMware Fusion, View Client, and Nick Weaver's Uber Network Fuser..which is going to come in really handy.

I've started a post about this in my blog if interested. I'll post part two after everything is here...and layout everything from beginning to end.

I may also wait until Mountain Lion comes out later this month to finish pending what issues I may encounter post upgrade.

http://virtualfng.wordpress.com

On a side note..what is everyone using for a Putty type application...I know the terminal app that comes with Mac OS X will work, but I really like putty, and the way you can save your sessions..etc?
 
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I wanted to resurrect this post because I'm starting to have more time because of the holidays and of course I miss you guys!!..lol.

Over past few months I've been working on 3 large projects View and vCloud and working on my Cisco unified computing support specialist specialization to start supporting UCS presales and installation going into 2013. We are also onboarding Netapp to have the capability to provide a reference architecture. As a Dell partner they have something called vStart but looking into it it seemed more trouble to even sell or configure and it doesn't offer true enterprise storage with equallogic...and no this is not a bash against equallogic I love their product set for small-mid sized businesses but I wouldn't classify it as true unified enterprise storage even with the FS addition.

Anyway, back on topic, sine e Autolab isn't updated for 5.1 yet I leveraged the router component and installed my nested esxi hosts and the latest version of FreeNAS manually all using SSD. It's working great so far and I'll be updating my Blog to finally finish the article if you guys are interested.
 
You can install AutoLab w/ 5.0 and then just upgrade vCenter and the vSphere hosts. That's what I did.
 
Thought about that but instead I'm just leveraging the router right now and am using the vsphere appliance.
 
Ha, there isn't even a linux client yet.

Vader said:
I still can't believe that there isn't a vSphere client etc for Mac OS yet...if I could cut out a Windows 7 VM I could free up additional memory. Memory is a killer here..if the mac mini could get up to 32GB of memory, I would just get one of those to bring to client sites.
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CEpeep said:
VMWare Workstation for Linux is a fully-functional VSphere client. It would be nice if they added the same functionality to Fusion as well.
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While I didnt know this, it's still worthy to point out that vmware workstation for linux is $249 whereas the plain vsphere client for windows is $0.
 
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