Lab(v3b) 11/2019 – 4 White Box + NUCi7
Lab(v3) 11/2017 – 2 White Box
CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950x (Zen) – 16 core @ 3.4 GHz
ESXi White01 RAM: 128 GB (16 * 8 sticks) – Adata AX4U2400316G16-SRZ XPG Z1 DDR4 2400MHz running @ 2133 MHz
ESXi Black01 RAM: 128GB (16 * 8 sticks) – G.Skill F4-2133C15Q-64GFX 64GB * 2 Kit DDR4 2133 MHz
ESXi White02 RAM: 128 GB (16 * 8 sticks) – G.Skill F4-2133C15Q-64GFXR 64GB * 2 Kit DDR4 2133MHz
ESXi Black02 RAM: 128GB (16 * 8 sticks) – G.Skill F4-2133C15D-32GFX 32Gb * 4 Kit DDR4 2133MHz
MB: ASRock X399 Professional Gaming (with BIOS 2.10 & AGESA 1.0.0.4)
Case: Corsair Carbide 400c White/Black
Power Supply: Cool Master V750 Full Modular 750W 80 Plus Gold
Video: Zotac Nvidia Geforce 710 1GB DDR3
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9 TR4-SP3 92mm U-Type
NVMe Card Expansion: Asus Hyper 16 x M.2 (4 * NVMe M.2)
Storage:
Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe 256 GB (as ESXi boot disk)
vSAN Disk Group #1
Samsung 970 PRO M.2 NVMe 512 GB (as Cache disk)
Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe 1 TB (as Data disk)
Samsung 960 EVO M.2 NVMe 1 TB (as Data disk)
Host Networking:
2 * 1 Gigabit On board LAN Adapters (Wake on Lan enabled)
1 * 10 Gigabit – Intel X540-T2 Dual port Adapter
Lab(v3) – Networking
TP-Link TL-SG1016DE Managed Easy Smart Switch – 16-Port 1 Gigabit Base-T
2 * TP-Link T1700X-16TS Managed Switch – 12-Port 10 Gigabit Base-T + 4 Ports 10 Gigabit SFP+
Lab(v3) add-on 04/2018 – The Service Console
Intel NUC7i7DNKE – BLKNUC7I7DNK2E Kit
CPU: Intel i7 8650U (Kaby Lake R) – 4 Core @ 1.9 GHz – Turbo max @ 4.2 GHz
RAM: 32 GB (16GB * 2 sticks) – Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 2400MHz BLS16G4S240FSD
Storage: Samsung 960 EVO M.2 NVMe 512 GB
Host Networking: 1 Gigabit On board LAN Adapter
Virtualization Layer: vSphere 7.0U2
On top:
- VCSA 7U2
- NSX-V 6.4.10
- CentOS 7 VM for NTP/DNS services
SDDC Layer:
vSphere 8 & vSAN 8 OSA & NSX 4.0.1.1
SDDC Lab Settings:
ESXi installing boot options
systemMediaSize=min
vSAN Settings
vSAN Fake SCSI Reservation (for installing Nested ESXI on vSAN) – on each node
esxcli system settings advanced set -o /VSAN/FakeSCSIReservations -i 1
vSAN TRIM/UNMAP
Get-Cluster -name Home_Cluster | Set-VsanClusterConfiguration -GuestTrimUnmap:$true
vSAN Default Storage Policy = FTT1 (RAID1)
vSAN Dedupe & Compression ON
vSAN Automatic Rebalance ON
ESXi memory settings (dedupe)
ESXi Large Pages disabled on each node
Mem.AllocGuestLargePage = 0
ESXi Transparent Page Sharing (TPS) enabled on each node
Mem.ShareForceSalting = 0
Nested vLabs 