UPDATE: Sold Have finally decided to sell my Intel NUC based VMware vSphere home lab, it’s not being used anymore as I’m fortunate to have access to more powerful hardware at work. In summary, it’s 4 nodes with a total of 16 cores (32 threads) of 2.9GHz (boost to 3.5GHz), 224GB memory, and 2TB storage. Essentially everything you need, bar…
Intro In the previous post in this series we created VLAN interfaces and networks on our pfSense virtual router appliance, created firewall rules to allow traffic, and then enabled VLAN trunking on the ports our NUCs were connected to on our physical switch. In this post we are going to created our nested ESXi hosts. Again, like I have said…
Intro In the previous post in this series we deployed vCenter, DNS, jump hosts and the pfSense virtual router appliance. In this post we are going to configure the pfSense virtual router. Again, like I have said previously, this is one way to do it, there are many permutations. Goal here is to get up and running asap. Nothing stopping…
Intro In the previous post in this series we installed ESXi 6.7 on the NUC’s, performed some networking and storage configuration. In this post we are going to deploy some VMs, or core VMs as I call them, on the NUCs such as VCSA, a domain controller, jumps, and a virtual router appliance. Again, like I have said previously, this…
Intro In the previous blog post we went through the kit required to setup a home lab. In this post we will cover setting up the NUCs which includes installing ESXi and configuring the base network. As previously mentioned, this series will not be detailed step by step but more so pointers as I believe those installing PKS with NSX-T…
Intro The goal of this series of blog posts is to cover how to standup a VMware PKS (with NSX-T) home lab from the ground up. This will be a manual process, aka “the hard way”, not using any automation to stand it all up. I believe if you understand “the hard way” then its a lot easier to troubleshoot…