What do you use VMs for at home?

My lab is for testing and learning.

2x ESXi 5 Hosts

Windows 2008 R2 - vCenter 5
Windows 2008 R2 - Domain Controller (AD,DNS)
Windows 2008 R2 - Domain Controller Backup
Windows 2008 R2 - Exchange
Windows 2008 R2 - Radius & NTP
Windows 7 - Client for VMware Management via remote RDP
Windows 7 - Workstation
Windows 7 - Guest
Windows 8 - Evaluation
 
I run the following on my ESXi whitebox
- 1x Win 2k8: Vcenter
- 1x Avamar Virtual Edition: testing and learning for my Avamar specialist. I'm gonna deploy a second one once i expand my NAS storage. 750GB preallocated hurts.
- 2x debian for random linux stuff.
 
NanoHavoc said:
Oh wow, I was thinking of something else completely. The thing that colleges usually give to students that gives them free access to a bunch of software ahah
Click to expand...

You might be thinking of Dreamspark. Depending on your school, you can get quite a bit for free.
 
1x 2008 R2 DC
2x 2008 R2 VCenter
1x 2003 Server 3CX
3x CUCM Servers (Clustered... For the moment)

Next project is to turn up XenDesktop at home
 
Right now, running single beefy box running Dual Nehalems running ESXi 5.0 U1:

2k8 R2 SP1 DC/DNS
2k8 R2 SP1 & 2k8 R2 SQL
2k8 R2 SP1 vCenter/VUM/Dump Collector/Syslog Server
FreeNAS: 4TB RAIDz pool/1TB Mirrored ZFS w/SSD Cache Pool: Intel PT1000 Dualport & IBM 1015 Passthrough
vCMA: for remote management via IPAD app
vMA: cli management
3 x ESXi 5 u1 hosts for vCloud Director
vCloud Director Appliance
vShield Manager

on vCD:
Windows Server 8 Web/App/DB test vApp
View 5
Windows 7 for remote management via View Pool connected via Laptop View client or IPAD client.

All connected via HP Procurve 1810-24G.

Nested VMs and ESXi servers are working great...much better than expected. It's doing exactly what it was intended to do, test and learn VMware products. I don't really need server type hardware for prod use for the house...just don't need it anymore.
 
Last edited:
jjandrob said:
what would amazon ship you? lol.
Click to expand...

Likely electronic delivery of your registration details.

You can also find 15% off coupon codes throughout the internet, that's what I used when I purchased it through microsoft.
 
shnelson said:
Likely electronic delivery of your registration details.

You can also find 15% off coupon codes throughout the internet, that's what I used when I purchased it through microsoft.
Click to expand...

all expired the 29th of last month.
 
found another post with a working code for %15 off upfront... total was just over $300. Thanks [H] for the suggestion. Hopefully my cable modem will be able to keep up.

For my lab i use Vmware Player on top of a windows 7 AMD 6 core processor. Today arrives via UPS 32gb of ram for this computer. Currently running the software below.
*Windows server 2008 (bought) w/ exchange 2010 (trial).
*Cicso call manger 8.0
*Cisco unity connection 8.0
*asterisk
 
For any of you running an asterisk server for your home labs, are you doing it with google voice? If so, is there any real advantage as opposed to just running an obi100/110 standalone? I'm not very up on the VoIP scene, so if someone could fill me in I'd appreciate it.
 
Tiporaro said:
For any of you running an asterisk server for your home labs, are you doing it with google voice? If so, is there any real advantage as opposed to just running an obi100/110 standalone? I'm not very up on the VoIP scene, so if someone could fill me in I'd appreciate it.
Click to expand...

freepbx :)
 
Isn't freepbx just basically a frontend for asterisk? Am I missing something in your answer that should be very obvious to me? Was under the impression that you still needed some sort of service provider...which is what brought up my question above.

Sorry if I'm being blind.
 
I think this thread should be a "sticky".

I had VMWare server running on an old laptop for a few years. Started on a p4m based compaq and later moved it to a core duo based HP.

I had 3 Debian VM's
1st VM provided external SSH and VPN.
2nd VM acted as a web server.
3rd VM was more or less a test system for me to play in. Had some little scripts running that would send me emails and texts about the status of my systems

One of them (I forget which) had a pod cast downloader app.

The host machine did SMB, NFS and FTP shares - internal only.

At first I had it all running on the host machine, but I kept breaking stuff. So I decided the separate the services to their own VMs. That way I could keep breaking apache w/o being afraid to mess up my VPN server.

I had a XP machine always running as well - I used it mostly when I wanted to download stuff overnight, but didn't want to leave my desktop running. My magic jack was setup in this VM. Also used it when I was away from home. VPN home and RDP to this machine.

I had a few other machines setup, but didn't normally have them running. The host laptop only had 4gb of RAM (though it all ran very well). I miss having my VPN - it was kind of useful :(

Once I settle on new hardware, I'm setting it up again. The xeon e3-1260L seems to be exactly what I want - if only it didn't cost so much.
 
VMware Workstation with the following guests:
  • Linux Mint 11
    - Minecraft server for myself and five other friends
    - testing hyperlinks sent to me by my friends over IM​
  • Windows XP SP3
    - Certain Japanese games
    - Korean F2P games (ones that don't detect VMs) because I hate when some of them override screen settings in Windows 7 or can't be put in windowed mode​
They're all currently running on my own home computer-- not open 24/7 of course, only when I want to do something in them.

If I could properly get Apache up and running in Linux guest (such as my Linux Mint Debian guest), I'd switch to that but have been having issues getting the FTP server installation (vsftp) working on that guest OS.
 
Hi, OP. I have a similar setup (i7 920 and 24GB RAM) and use VMWare Workstation for the following:

Windows XP: for applications that don't work properly under Win7 x64, applications that could possibly be infected or heavily ad-supported. There are also applications for temporary use (i.e. student edition software required by certain University courses) that I don't want crapping up my host system. Also, games that I can't run properly under Win7 but require hardware acceleration. Plus, browsing sites or search results that could possibly be malicious (the Snapshot feature really comes in handy when doing this risky behavior).

Windows 98SE: Mainly used for legacy apps and 9x-era games that don't require hw acceleration but will not run in XP or later, nor will run in DOSBox. Also good for diagnosing any software problems with clients that, somehow, still have machines with this OS.

Windows 8 CP: Go figure.

Windows 2000/NT: The same for the latter reason I have a 98SE VM. Mostly use it as a history lesson, though.

Xubuntu 10.10: Mostly for learning Linux/Unix exclusive commands or system administration. Also for doing things that are rather difficult to do in Windows, such as creating and formatting 720K floppy images. :D

There are also some temporary VMs I create for testing LiveCDs, various linux distros, floppy images, multiboot configs involving BCD or GRUB or LILO or etc., nlited/vlited Windows discs.


Just recently, I've been teaching myself AD with a Server 2008 license from MSDNAA and several XP VMs.
 
Box running ESXi 5.0
VMs:
OpenIndiana 151a2 running as NAS(CIFS)+iSCSI
2 DCs
1 WSUS Server
1 Windows 7 for ShadowProtect ImageManager (verifying backups for physical machines)
1 Windows 7 running FTP+Sabnzbd
1 Windows 7 running Sickbeard
1 Windows 7 running Plex Media Server
1 Ubuntu Guest for SSH Remote Access
1 Windows XP box for Taxes :), though that only gets spinned up for Tax Time.

Second Server should be coming and I'll be migrating my Plex Media Server to that + spinning up a third DC so all DCs aren't on the same host.

Other Various VMs inside Workstation 8 on my Laptop and Desktop, but those are just test boxes and aren't in constant use... which the above are.. except that taxes one.
 
Setting up my first whitebox, currently running whs 2011 was thinking about SBS 2011.

Turnkey Lamp server
 
Budman17r said:
Setting up my first whitebox, currently running whs 2011 was thinking about SBS 2011.

Turnkey Lamp server
Click to expand...

sbs 2011 wants loads of ram 8gigs or more anything less = slower than frozen molasses.

BUT when you get it working it's pretty sweet.. I liked it..

Turnkey = awesome love all those pre-built os's :)
 
Dash- What do you use SBS for? I tried working with it, but did not like it. I felt I needed ram for other boxes, I like to split things up more for redundancy
 
ChRoNo16 said:
Dash- What do you use SBS for? I tried working with it, but did not like it. I felt I needed ram for other boxes, I like to split things up more for redundancy
Click to expand...

i used to run it for my home domain & email & calendar etc etc it worked awesome my first time running a real sbs serer with email, i figured it out pretty easily. I gave mine 12 gigs and she was happy. right now on my new Dell Server R415 it only has 8 gigs, but i'm upping that slowly to 64+ gigs :)

About to order my Idrac 6 card and 16 gigs of ram...
 
SBS is great for small business's but man do you grow to hate it. Personally I think SBS/EBS Can be a walking microsoft contradiction most days.
 
calvinj said:
SBS is great for small business's but man do you grow to hate it. Personally I think SBS/EBS Can be a walking microsoft contradiction most days.
Click to expand...

Agreed. For SMB it's awesome, unless you have a bunch of people dicking with it and then it gets effed up and then you're screwed cause everything is integrated together in one OS and on one box.
 
I do suppose this isn't at "home" (in colocation due to heat/noise) but it is my personal vm setup.

Openfiler SAN, 3.2TB - 16 spindle in DAS array attached to a headend. iSCSI from there.
1 - Dual 8c 64GB ram supermicro, soon to be 32c/256gb configuration.
2 - Dual 4c 16GB ram PE1950

These are running xenserver and esxi 4 respectively. Soon to be moved to running Openstack.

VM's vary between windows and linux, but mainly all outward facing testing.
 
I just run some naked Win XP / Vista / 7 VM's on mine. Why? Because having the actual OS running for you when you have to do phone support is a goddamn godsend. I just RDP to the Hyper-V machine, and pick from the OS I need. The 2K8 part is my PDC and file server, along with backup DNS.

Walking 70 year old ladies through Vista menu's blindly? Possible, but annoying. Having the same menu structure makes it easier cause you can literally say word for word whats there for them. Blood Pressure drops by 30 points thanks to that.

I also use them as test hubs for various AV and software configurations. Helps there too. I can semi break things if I need to and semi-duplicate results.
 
stiltner said:
I just run some naked Win XP / Vista / 7 VM's on mine. Why? Because having the actual OS running for you when you have to do phone support is a goddamn godsend. I just RDP to the Hyper-V machine, and pick from the OS I need. The 2K8 part is my PDC and file server, along with backup DNS.

Walking 70 year old ladies through Vista menu's blindly? Possible, but annoying. Having the same menu structure makes it easier cause you can literally say word for word whats there for them. Blood Pressure drops by 30 points thanks to that.

I also use them as test hubs for various AV and software configurations. Helps there too. I can semi break things if I need to and semi-duplicate results.
Click to expand...

used to work for a company on the island here that we did the same exact same thing for, dial up connection after dial up connection every day, plus other things like email setups and ie settings etc etc etc et the list was LONG!!
 
I have 3 VMs running on my server at the moment, my zimbra e-mail, web server and cacti monitoring.

I do a lot of other stuff on my other servers but those are the only ones on 24/7.
 
Two Xen 6.0 servers with shared storage on a FreeNAS box

- Domain controller 1, Win2k8 SP2
- Domain controller 2, Win2k8 SP2
- MS Exchange 2010
- SharePoint, Win2k8 R2
- CleanMail server, WinXP
- TMG 2010 (in progress... pissing me off)

In VMware Workstation, I have a Win7 development box, as well as a VM for tuning my Mustang.
 
Fun stuff:
Counter strike source server
Left 4 dead 2 server
Garry's Mod server
Crysis Multiplayer Server
Call of Duty 4 Server
Unreal tournament 3 server
Minecraft Server
------------
Serious stuff:
AD
Web Server
Exchange

any other nerdy junk I got going on at the moment
 
VM's I use:

Gentoo based Heads for 2 Linux Render Farms
pfSense
Cacti
Turnkey Django Dev Appliance
Turnkey Mediawiki Appliance
Turnkey Git Appliance
Turnkey Postgres Appliance
Turnkey AppEngine Dev Appliance
Turnkey Core Appliance (dev/testing)
Gentoo based Couchpotato/Sickbeard/SabNZB/torrent box.
Gentoo based DistCC Compiler.
Openfiler (dev/test)
FreeBSD (dev/test)
NAPP-IT (dev/test)
Webserver Appliance
Dedicated BOINC.
Reddit core (dev/testing)
Gentoo ZFSonLinux (dev/testing)
Linux Kernel (dev/testing)
Joomla Server (dev/testing)
cPanel (dev/testing)
Plesk (dev/testing)
vBulletin (dev/testing)
phpBB (dev/testing)
Simple Machines (dev/testing
WHS Server
XBMC (dev/testing)
XBMC (scrub/library updating) (Have 2 eeebox based XBMC boxes)
2 Minecraft servers (Live/dev)
UT99 server
Quake 2 server
Quake 3 server
Section8 server
Gentoo based Crosscompiler VM's for all non x86 platforms.
Windows 98 (clean for support)
Windows NT 4 WS (clean for support)
Windows XP (clean for support)
Windows 2000 (clean for support)
Windows 2003 (clean for support)
Windows Vista (clean for support)
Windows 2008 (clean for support)
Windows 7 (clean for support)
Windows NT 4 Exchange server. (clean for support)
Windows 2000 Exchange server. (clean for support)
Windows 2003 Exchange server. (clean for support)
Windows 2008 Exchange server. (clean for support)
Windows 2008 Exchange server. (Live)
Windows NT 4 IIS server. (clean for support)
Windows 2000 IIS server. (clean for support)
Windows 2003 IIS server. (clean for support)
Windows 2008 IIS server. (clean for support)
Windows 2008 IIS server (Live).
Windows NT 4 MSSQL server. (clean for support)
Windows 2000 MSSQL server. (clean for support)
Windows 2003 MSSQL server. (clean for support)
Windows 2008 MSSQL server. (clean for support)
Windows 2008 MSSQL server (Live).
Windows 7 Pro with Android dev tools
Windows 7 Pro with Eclipse suite for Java
Windows 7 Pro with Eclipse suite for Python
Windows 7 Pro with Eclipse suite for PHP

I have a ton more, but these are the ones I actually use at least 1ce a week.
Have a ton of other VM's with Linux distro's, linux apps, game servers, ... but don't use those much unless I need to test something I did or test an update.
Windows servers are both vanilla and R2 versions and copies of VM's running the different supported Exchange/MSSQL versions.
 
I tried to configure apache me and it are having a fight over Vhosts, make an ip with a port :500 for example and it doesn't go... I just read your list
 
How exactly do you mean?

You can't get Apache to run port 500 on 1 VM? Or are you having trouble assigning port 500 because it conflicts with other VM's?
 
I installed Turnkey Lamp

I created a Virtual Host In apache for the same ip port 500, I set the document root, and I'm unable to get to the webpage or anything like that (Even if I set the Directory indexes (index.html etc).


I've followed a few guides but I can't get it to work. Tried port 5000 and port 500. I even installed ubuntu server lamp (full install) and it wouldn't serve the page.
 
VMs:
  • Windows XP Professional (Outlook 2007)
  • Windows XP Professional (Software Experimentation)
  • Debian 6 x32 CL
  • Debian 6 x64 CL

All running with VMware Server with Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard host OS as my file server on a 2.666GHz Xeon X3230 (Kentsfield 4-Core), 8GB of DDR3, 1TB 7,200 RPM HD, and a NVIDIA Quadro NVS 295.
 
2 x Dell SC1435's w/ 2 x Quad 8376HE 2.3Ghz w/ 32GB RAM
2 x Dell SC1435's w/ 2 x Quad 8376HE 2.3Ghz w/ 16GB RAM

1 x FreeBSD Nameserver
1 x Asterisk PBX
1 x Windows SBS 2011
1 x 2008 R2 AD
1 x 2008 R2 Virtualcenter (Unused currently)
1 x Linux Ubuntu Server (Hosted for friend)
1 x Lab Windows 7 VM
1 x Linux Webhosting Box (Ubuntu)
1 x pfSense Router (for home connection, public wifi, etc)
1 x vShield Manager (Disabled)
1 x VMWare VSA (Current vCenter Appliance, migrating off this soon)
1 x Juniper SA Appliance (SSLVPN for VPN into home network)
1 x Windows 2003 Server (Quickbooks)
1 x Windows XP or 2008 R2 if it will run Ubiquiti Unifi

All that is running on 2 of the SC1435's. The other 2 hosts are in Standby mode until I need to spin them up. Not even pushing the current 2, so it would just be a waste on power. These 8376HE's in the SC1435's are little powerhouses for the power utilization.
 
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