click until it works why am i so bad at this!?

VMWare Lab – Planning

So I'm currently looking at putting in a fully featured VMWare vSphere Lab at home. I've been fiddling around with a something like this inside VMWare workstation for some time now, using virtual ESXi 5 hosts and while it has been educational, the inability to use 64bit VMs inside the virtual hosts - among with many other limitations - has been frustrating.

So now I'm in the planning stages of getting new hardware to build a full home lab.

ESXi Hosts:

• Shuttle SH67H7
• Intel i7 2600
• 2x Geil EVO Corsa Series DDR3 2x8GB
• Intel Gigabit ET Dual Port Gigabit
• SanDisk Cruzer Fit 4GB

Storage Host

• Intel i3 2100
• Gigabyte GA Z68P-DS3
• 8GB of DDR3 (already have)
• Case/PSU (Lian Li 2000-something, whatever PSU is in it)
• Intel Gigabit ET Dual Port Gigabit
• 4x WD Caviar Black 1.5TB

This storage host will be running Server 2008 R2 and the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target to provide shared storage to the hosts. After messing around a bit with OpenFiler and FreeNAS, it turns out the MS software target is the easiest to set up.

The Shuttle boxes turn out to be a rather cost efficient way of whiteboxing hosts. Since they include the case, PSU and motherboard in one package, you end up saving a few dollars. They come in a small physical form factor which is useful for those of us who don't live in mcmansions with dedicated home server rooms/basements.

Using the part list above and buying 2 ESXi hosts will cost somewhere around $3000 AUD.  If I had a spare box lying around I'd turn that into the storage host. Unfortunately I gave my last retired box to my parents to use as a media PC so I'll probably have to buy a new one.

I'll also need another switch of some sort. I might try scrounge something being retired from work or off ebay.

Anyway, this is still in its planning stage as I work out exactly what I need and how much it will cost. I'll post a final item list when I actually bite the bullet and order it all.