[VMwareLAB] – 1.first thoughts

A lot of has been written about building your own VMware LAB, nevertheless, I just wanna share my personal experience and maybe still help someone 🙂

As a VMware enthusiast you, at some point in time had the need to test new products or features from VMware and found yourself without options for it.

Like many of you, I started with VMware workstation on my desktop, building a nested environment to try out simple features but soon realized the resources were just not there and that was the trigger to start thinking about alternatives.

There were a couple of options:

1. Rent a physical server from an IaaS provider
2. Use my friend’s lab (I have really nice friends)
3. Upgrade my desktop to be used as a lab
4. Buy dedicated hardware

Next step, define the Pros and Cons for each option.

1. Rent a physical server from an IaaS provider

PROS:

• No need to worry about hardware
• No electric bill
• Easy and fastest setup times

CONS:

• Not budget-friendly, even the cheapest one was too expensive
• Limited hardware options (RAM, CPU, Disks)

2. Use my friend’s lab

PROS

• Free or close to free (shared electrical bill)
• Able to influence hardware upgrades

CONS

• Be dependent on my friend’s goodwill
• Don’t have full control of the Lab

3. Upgrade my desktop to be used as a Lab

PROS

• Full control of hardware
• Cheaper compared to 1st option
• Just missing RAM

CONS

• Hardware limitation (max 64GB RAM)
• DDR4 it’s very expensive
• Limit scalability

4. Buy dedicated hardware

PROS

• Scalability
• Customizable
• Dedicated for the Lab

CONS

• Big initial investment
• Electic/Internet bill

Verdict

After breaking my piggybank I went for the 4th option.

Next steps are to actually select the hardware and assemble everything…

As always,

Have fun and KISS