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Virtual Geek

Tales from real IT system administrators world and non-production environment

PART 2 : BUILDING AND HARDWARE BUYING GUIDE IDEAS FOR VMWARE LAB

My New Lab with new Hardware

I am very glad that I have got my new hardware for my Lab testing and training. In my earlier post I provided complete overview how is my current old hardware and I use it to do all the lab practical. After purchasing my new hardware I found it is much faster than my old lab and I can put more and more load on it. After long research and discussion with one of my friend (he also ordered same White Box so we can share both computers with each other whenever needed) everything we ordered from Amazon.in, found all parts are genuine and seal pack. I assembled it myself with my prior knowledge of assembling, It was kind of fun building your own super server computer.

My new white box is as below with price
Motherboard ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 -- 4,675.00 INR (US $ 69.25)
CPU Processor AMD FX8320E 3.20 Ghz -- 11,800.00 INR (US $ 174.79)
Memory/RAM DIMM1: Kingston HyperX KHX1866C10D3/8G -- Each 2,429.00 INR (US $ 35.98) (Total 32 GB 4x8GB 9716.00 INR (US $ 143.92))
HDD Seagate Barracuda 1TB ST1000DM003 -- 3,780.00 INR (US $ 55.99)
SSD Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB -- 7,648.00 INR (US $ 113.29)
Corsair VS Series VS450 - 450 Watt SMPS -- 2,549.00 INR (US $ 37.76)
Circle Cabinet CC 821 without SMPS (with 3 LED FAN) -- 3,245.00 INR (US $ 48.07)
APC BX600C-IN 600VA, 230V Back UPS -- 2,575.00 (US $ 38.14)

It costed me around 47000 INR (US $ 700), if you notice I didn’t ordered DVD writer, Keyboard-Mouse and Monitor. I wanted to keep my lab completely economical, so I decided to install OS using Pen Drive, and will use old keyboard mouse and monitor until I install OS. Once everything is setup, my new computer will have only 2 cables connected first is power supply and second is network cable this way I can manage my new server remotely from laptop using RDP only, I whatever I planned for is working perfectly so far.

Here are some snaps I taken while assembling I hope they might be helpful to you.

I have build my computer so far and I will be configuring BIOS for optimization. First setting is storage configuration in BIOS, configure SATA configuration to AHCI. This will help getting complete storage bandwidth.

And another settings is Secure Virtual Machine Mode, This is AMD Virtualization (AMD-V™) technology is a set of on-chip features that help you make better use of and improve the performance of your virtualization resources. 

So Far I only found one issue but not a major one is CPU heating when you put some stress on the server, to overcome this I will need to purchase some good CPU cooler, most probably I am thinking for some liquid CPU cooling solution which is costly but results are awesome. Once I have enough funds I will complete this requirement soon. 

I am going to use VMWare Workstation for all my labs and its about to setup networking storage to get optimal speed and you won't face any lags.

Stay tuned I am coming up with on further configuring software requirements for the LAB. Feel free to add comments if you have any query don't hesitate to ask.

PART 1 : BUILDING AND BUYING GUIDE IDEAS FOR VMWARE LAB
PART 2 : BUILDING AND HARDWARE BUYING GUIDE IDEAS FOR VMWARE LAB
PART 3 : MY VSPHERE LAB CONFIGURATION ON VMWARE WORKSTATION
PART 4 : CONFIGURING VMWARE WORKSTATION NETWORKING IN HOME LAB
PART 5 : CONFIGURING STORAGE IN VMWare WORKSTATION FOR OPTIMAL SPEED
PART 6 : CONFIGURE VMWARE WORKSTATION TO SAVE SSD SPACE AND TIME
PART 7 : CREATING NESTED VMWARE ESXI SERVER VM IN HOMELAB ON VMWARE WORKSTATION
PART 8 : CPU COOLING SOLUTION FOR MY HOME LAB ON VMWARE WORKSTATION

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