About
Hi,
i’m Sammy Bogaert, a Senior System Engineer and my main focus is VMware Virtualization and PowerShell.
Most posts on my blog will be covering those areas.
Have fun reading!
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Boerlowie's Blog 
I enjoy your blog very much. I’m in the process of building out my i7 desktop and your recommendations for hardware have helped a lot. I’d be interested in seeing exactly which components you put into yours – did you go with a z68 chipset motherboard?
Jason,
actually i have bought my about 1 year ago. You can find the specs below (in the meantime, i have upgraded the RAM to 16 GB instead of 8 GB).
1 PCS 498976 Sony NEC Optiarc DVD±RW burner AD-7241S,
DVDRW 24x, LightScribe, SATA, Bulk, Zwart
1 PCS 481778 Cooler Master Sileo 500 Midi Tower
Fans: 1x 120mm Front, 1x 120mm Rear, Sound Proof, 2x USB, 1x eSATA
1 PCS 491303 Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333MHz 8GB CL9
Kit w/4x 2GB XMS3 modules, CL9-9-9-24, for Core i5 and i7, 1.5V
1 PCS 485983 Intel X25-M SSD 80GB 2,5″,
SATA2, read/write speed of up to 250MB/70MB sec, MLC, Gen.2
1 PCS 489949 Akasa AK-MX010 mounting module
voor 2½” SSD/HDD, past in 3½” bay, zwart aluminium
1 PCS 575732 Scythe Mugen 2 Rev. B CPU koeler
Socket 478/T/LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1366/754/939/AM2/AM2+/AM3/940
1 PCS 513219 ASUS P7P55D-E, P55, Socket-1156
DDR3, SATA 6Gb/s, USB3.0, ATX, GbLAN, Firewire, eSATA, PCI-Ex(2.0)x16
1 PCS 492768 Intel Core™ i7 Quad Processor i7-860
Quad Core, 2.80Ghz, Socket 1156, 8MB, 95W, Boxed w/fan
1 PCS 404885 Corsair CX 400W PSU
ATX 12V V2.2, 80 Plus, Standard, 1x 6+2-pin PCIe, 6x SATA, 120mm Fan
Hi Sammy, I’m a VMware Instructor and am setting up my own blog. I have been meaning to do so for a while but never got round to it!
I would like to link to some of your blog postings, particularly on you nested lab setup.
Hope you are OK with this, thanks.
Andy
No prob!
Pass me the link if you want… Always interested in good blogs 🙂
Hi Sam,
Great blog, your Building the Ultimate vSphere Lab series is pure awesome, can’t believe I hadn’t found it before today.
Thanks Dude,
Alex
Hi, Thank you for the great writeup. As you have played around with the systems need your opinion on setting up a lab with the following to run 4 – 5 vms for testing and study.
Will the below configuration suffice
core i5 |16GB RAM| 1 TB Disk
will choosing the motherboard be important here i am thinking between Intel and Gigabyte/MSI or Asus
Will the onboard NIC do or do you recommend a Intel Pro Card
Will be running Windows and Linux combination but one at a time across all the VM
Also will be running Apache Jmeter for load testing while playing with MSSql Cluster | replication and MySQL Master Slave scenerios with a minimal IIS | apache front end for inputting data
Sammy,
I just wanted to let you know that your Blog is REALLY great, Thanks for your time and input!! Bart
Hi Boerlowie.
I have learnt a lot from your blog as well as on various forums and I have created my own blog to give back to the community. I am still a newbie and so I am always waiting for suggestions and positive input. I wanted to ask your permission to link to some of your posts in my blog.
Hope it`s fine with you.
Thanks again for your hard work.
No problem linking to my blog! The more people read it, the better 🙂
Sammy, Thank you so much for the great blog on building a VMware Lab, It has helped me tremendously and saved me hour of work. Thanks again!!!
Glad you liked it!
Sammy…This is the best blog I have ever run across for setting up a testlab…just awesome!…I have a new IT guy coming in and the first thing I am going to have him do is to do your testlab to better really understand ESXi and VM….can’t say enough.!!!!!
Hi Sammy, Thanks for all the info. Just need you views on the following configuration which i am planning to buy,
Intel DQ77MK, Corsair DDR3 1600 8GBx4, i7 3770, 2TB Seagate HDD. One thing i am missing is the SSD. Do you really suggest it for the best performance.
Definately! An SSD will boost your performance A LOT! If you don’t have it, your lab will run, but not nearly as smooth as on an SSD.
If you’re on a budget, lower the HDD to 1 TB (or even less) to save some money. Even lowering your RAM to 16 GB and having an SSD will be a lot faster than 32 GB with only 1 HDD…
Hey Sammy. Awesome blogs. I’m just getting started out in the VMware side of things myself and wanted to know if it’s possible to get a hardcopy of your Ultimate VMware Lab set up?
Easiest thing to do is print is out as PDF and staple it together 🙂
Go ahead and spread it! As long as you mention my name/blog you’re more than welcome!
Hi Sammy,
Really happy to read your blog to get a clear picture of building a Vsphere lab at home, Thanks again !!!
By the way if you can….Please let us know as to how in the real corporate world they set things up using Windows domains, Vmware, Storage, hosting your applications on Citrix etc in a production environment…
Just an idea would also be welcome so that IT guys like us get a picture of the REAL IT WORLD !!!
Thanks a lot for all your hardwork, much appreciated.
Well, the real world always depends and varies per customer/install/requirements/environment/…
The thing with this lab is that it gives you the ability to play with the products at full force so you know it inside out. At that point, you can invent creative solutions to fit nearly every install/customer/setup/…
Hey man – really enjoyed the Workstation lab series and just used it twice this week. Once for myself and once to help a friend set up the same thing. I had been running a physical lab and was getting SO sick of hearing the fans in the basement, I decided this was a much better way to go. Like some other people mentioned, I’d love to cross post some of this stuff because it’s really well put together. Thanks for all the hard work!
You can visit my very young blog over at http://www.virtadmin.com and look for references to this material soon!
Thanks! I’ll keep an eye on your blog!
Sir,
I have used your blog many times in building out my vSphere Lab’s, it’s a great post and is incredbily useful.
I was looking at VMware lab’s today and came across this post;
Not sure if this your blog as well – have a look.
Nevermind – I missed the “Source and Credits” reference at the bottom.
Yeah, you have to scroll quite some miles until you reach the bottom 🙂
Hey Sammy,
I’m one of the many who have benefited from your vSphere Home Lab tutorial and I was just wondering if you had plans to lay out a new one anytime soon using Workstation 9, vSphere 5.1 (specifically how to properly integrate SSO into this home lab), and maybe a base on Server 2012 instead of 2008 R2. Yours is by far the best laid out documentation on how to do this right, and I was hoping the trend would continue with new iterations of software. Thanks for your efforts!
i do plan an updated version with Workstation 9, vSphere 5.1 and Server 2012 as soon as it’s certified. vCenter 5.1 isn’t yet supported on 2012, so i’m waiting for that (probably Update 1) to start with a new series!
I’m new to the VM world and i’m in the process of building a small home lab. if you can assist me in any way that would be greatly appreciated. I have 2 dell towers that meet the requirements to install ESXI5?
Installing ESXi is pretty straight forward. You could use the lab as a guideline to setup your infrastucture… But offcourse, your ESXi hosts will differ a bit from mine as they are real physical boxes…
Sammy,
I have started and destroyed my home lab (both virtual and physical) no less than a dozen times trying to figure out how to make everything talk and work correctly. Your tutorial is exactly what I have been searching for, and just wanted to say thank you. I’m actually embarrassed it took so long to find this, but am looking forward to seeing what you post next.
I have enjoyed going through your blog and your vSphere Home Lab tutorial. I am going through Workstation 9 and will add vSphere 5.1. I know you do not have this completed yet and that is fine. I do have a question regarding the current guide. Part 8:VCenter, I have completed all of the steps up to “Go Back to the SQL Server Configuration Manager and enable TCP/IP”. When I go there TCP/IP is already enabled. The next step to allow program or feature through firewall, I am there but I do not see SQL Server Windows NT – 64Bit. My options are: SQL Server Installation Center (64-bit) and SQL Server Management Studio and SQL Server Error and Usage Reporting. What did I do wrong as I cannot figure out why the options for SQL Server Windows NT – 64 Bit is not listed.
Thanks,
Tim
Never mind…I forgot that I placed SQL on SSD and not on Data disk.
I think an interum version for Workstation 9 and Server 2028 would be good. It appears there is a lot of confusion on how you install vCenter and ESXI for 5.1. Having a guide that would show those changes and even more important for others, what evaluation software to down load, would be helpfull. A lot of questions on this going around and even VMware support team is not quite sure about the different versions and how to install them. I.e. to install vcenter you need to use autorun, well, in 5.1 it appears that has gone away. Thoughts!!!
Yeah i know… But when it’s approved for 2012, i guess most people would want to give 2012 a spin… And i thing/guess that the procedure for 2012 might change a bit.
Wonder though why it takes so long for VMware to support 2012…
great lab setup tutorial!! I am not finished yet but thanks so far!!
I have a question, I did try but failed to get it working.
how would I add in a firewall to this network (home lab workstation network) to allow internet access as if it was a real network??
ie wan-> firewall of some kind -> lan-> esxi hosts -> esxi vms -> windows 7 desktop vm -> access to google
I did see your comment on how to allow a certain vm internet access but I would like to replicate our work network??
In that case i would create a seperate firewall. Give the firewall internet access and give it access to the VMs as well (so it would have like 2 NICs). Change the default gateway to point to the firewall and then it’s just a matter of setting up the rules on the firewall!
Thank you for your great post about the guide on how to build a virtualization lab. I have completed the building thanks to your sharing! Your guide is the best of the best guide!
Hi Sammy, and thank you so much for your blog ! It is an easy read and very informative for someone like me just starting with the VM products. I have a question that might be stupid… I understand how it s good to setup HA for the VM on the ESXi hosts, but what happened if the DC, SQL or vCenter servers go down ? Is there a way to have them setup for HA as well ? What is the best practice infrastructure for production environment ?
Thanks again !
Julien
Well in a real production environment, you would just simply host those VMs on the vSphere cluster and they will profit from HA!
Hello Sammy, thank you for your nice blog post about the nested ESXi lab with linked clones. I recreated this via your guide a year ago and am in the progress of doing this now on OS X with VMware Fusion, Windows Server 2012 / SQL Server 2012 and ESXi5.1.
With your permission I would like to blog about this myself, but sorta using your method. Would this be okay or are you opposed to this idea?
I enjoy your learning tools, very well written. I have a question. I am working through the VM course “building the ultimate VM lab” I am on section 4 loading the default VM. I am at the update section and I cannot get it to connect. In my network connections I have vnet1 . vnet2, and vent 8. If I look at the VM Network selection I have Vnet0, vnet 1 Connected with a 192.xxx address, vnet2 connected with a 10.x.x.x and vnet 8 Connected with a 192.x.x.x. The vnet0 does not say connected but states Auto bridged. When I do an IP config on the VM I get a legitimate address, but I cannot get it to connect for the updates. I even attempted to create a bridge with the NIC and the Virtual nics. What am I doing wrong and can it be fixed. (I believe that I chose vnet 8 not vnet 0 on the previous selections)