Here is a list of the gear I’m using in my home lab. I need to do three things with this lab. One is testing the Horizon Suite from VMware. The second is developing workflows for vCenter Operation Manager. The third, and most important, is running a Craftbukkit Minecraft server for my kids and their friends.
Contact root(at)vhipster.com if you are looking for a kid-friendly Minecraft server. No griefing!
Networking
I was lucky enough to get a home lab kit from Cisco Meraki when I took the training class for it. I can’t rave enough about how cool Meraki is. I’ve always been a server guy with a some EMC storage sprinkled on. I want to add more networking to my skillset, but for now Meraki gives me everything I need to test thing like vCAC.
It’s a complete Cloud-based networking kit- the config is blown down to the devices from Cisco’s cloud. It comes with:
MX60
- Stateful firewall
- Auto VPN™ self-configuring site-to-site VPN
- Active Directory integration
- Identity-based policies
- Client VPN (IPsec)
- 3G / 4G failover via USB modem
- Layer 7 application visibility and traffic shaping
- Application prioritization
- It even has MDM! Manage your kids iPads!
MS220-8P (eight port) managed switch (trunking, yea!)
- 8 port gigabit Ethernet
- 2 × SFP for 1G uplink, non-shared
- MS220-8P includes 124 W PoE / PoE+
MR16
- Wireless access point
- 802.11 a/b/g/n
Servers
I built two hosts in a Lian Li case with Noctua fans for quiet cooling. They each have:
- Supermicro X9SCM-IIF-O
- Intel Xeon Processor E3-1230 v2(8M Cache, 3.30 GHz)
- Kingston Technology ValueRAM 32GB Kit of 4 (4 x 8 GB) DDR3 1600MHz PC3 12800 ECC CL11 DIMM
- SeaSonic SS-400FL2 Active PFC F3 400W 80 PLUS Platinum Fanless ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
- Intel Pro 1000 PT Quad Port PCIe x1 Adapter
- Micron P420 PCIe SSD cards for PernixData
- When I can afford another server, I’ll get vSAN rocking.
NAS/CIFS Storage
Western Digital WD Sentinel RX4100
- Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials
- Intel Atom Dual Core 1.80 Ghz
- 4GB RAM
- 4-bay 1U rack mount (My wife sure wishes this was a desktop model)
- 8TB Capacity
VMware Storage
DiskStation DS1813+
- 8 bay enclosure with SSDs
Backups
Western Digital Arkeia DA2300 Backup and Recovery Appliance
- WD Se™ Hard Drives
- WD Arkeia vStorage Backup Agent for protection of VMware ESX and ESXi environments
- Progressive Deduplication
PernixData
2 Micron P420 PCIe SSD cards provide write caching in a PernixData FVP cluster.
Thinclients
- LG Cloud Monitor All-in-One Zero Client – Teradici Tera2321
- 10Zig
