andyturpie Posted January 19, 2015 Posted January 19, 2015 As the title suggests how many of you have a test lab at home for mucking around with? I want to start to get to grips with a vanilla network and was wondering how for those that did, what is your set up? VM machines or a physical box etc?
synaesthesia Posted January 19, 2015 Posted January 19, 2015 Quite a few VMs set up in my case. Lots of RAM and storage, and lots of scenarios. Would like to get into networking a bit more but no room for physical switches 1
andyturpie Posted January 19, 2015 Author Posted January 19, 2015 Think I have the hardware ticked I am running a 2nd Gen core i7 with 16gb RAM 240gb SSD and 4tb of conventional HDD, hanging off a 2 port KVM, but don't know whether to build another physical box (might come in handy as I would love to play around with ESXi etc. at some point too).
DalekSec Posted January 19, 2015 Posted January 19, 2015 got my 2 old built PC's a raspberry pi and an old IMAC G4 in the process of getting Linux on to. Use them all for testing etc 1
Oaktech Posted January 19, 2015 Posted January 19, 2015 I have VMs on laptops, a few friends have some microservers that we lend and borrow for testing, I have a cisco implementation on my home network as well as a sophos UTM. I regularly borrow machine for a few days to try something out, but I don't have a permanent lab anymore. I gave that up in 2010 as it was obviously out of date when I started at the senior school. The school was way better equipped to do testing at work. 1
jamesb Posted January 19, 2015 Posted January 19, 2015 A few desktops running a variety of VMs, a half-dozen old EEE PCs and SD cards to swap around so I can spin up utility servers as and when I feel like it, couple of laptops used as actual machines, several wifi points and switches and so far just the one Raspberry Pi (changing soon). Most of the equipment is nabbed second-hand from people who were getting rid of old machines, but is decent enough after a few cheap upgrades to run VirtualBox and two or three low-spec virtual servers. The EEE PCs were taken from someone who'd been evaluating them, and decided they weren't suitable, and they're absolutely fantastic - I have a library of SD card images stored and just need to burn one and slap it in a machine to have it up and running. Virtualization mostly (except the EEE's and Pi), but some switches and routers for networking playtimes. Total cost about £40 in petrol driving around and picking up second hand kit. 1
hardtailstar Posted January 19, 2015 Posted January 19, 2015 I want one but haven't got the space. I have looked into it as I have a few old machines and laptops.
MrKJLS Posted January 19, 2015 Posted January 19, 2015 I mainly run VM's in Hyper-V for Windows 8.1. I don't have the space for any equipment 1
dhicks Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 As the title suggests how many of you have a test lab at home for mucking around with? For a home server, I still have a Tranquil PC machine - with SSD harddrives it's completly silent, but still powerful enough to run several VMs. For those wanting to do some networking work without stacks of physical hardware all over the place, you can get virtual machines that act as switches - interesting to try out OpenFlow stuff on. At work, we're finally getting a decent development environment sorted out, with a proper set of development and test servers and code in source code control. 1
sted Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 various vms on my i7 laptop and my i5 nuc and a spare crummy gb switch if I need to test networking stuff but nowt special (I just made sure both my pcs had as much ram as I could shoehorn in and ssd's (though I tend to use the 2nd hdd for vms on both) I have also in the past used my microserver but I found it too slow and only has 3gb of ram. but as above just use hyperv on 8.1 server 2008r2 1
cpjitservices Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 Yes, I have a Quad core server 24GB RAM 4TB of space in RAID config, running Server 2012 Data Center and using Hyper-V for some remote desktops.... And testing purposes. 1
mdench Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 I have my desktop at home i7 with 32GB of ram for mucking around with VMS and a few old desktops plugged in for work on my media server / playing around with websites etc 1
Davit2005 Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 A few MicroServers running VMWare ESXi with DC's, FileServers MDT, a few Windows 7 VM's and a SAN connected via iSCSI sitting on a 2012 R2 server that has Veeam Free edition for backups. Many old Cisco, HP and 3Com switches to do a bit of networking stuff. I think I have too much spare time on my hands somehow 1
mthomas08 Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 Think if I started to create my own network in anyway at home, the other half would rip in to me and her family would say worse... 2
dave.81 Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 Dont even have a computer at home! Take work's Macbook home but rarely comes out of the bag.
themightymrp Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 Used to run some VM's at home using VirtualBox, just a basic domain controller with a client attached. Now I use my office machine for doing the same thing (its more powerful) and use Windows 8.1's implementation of Hyper-V. If I need to tinker at home I can just remote into my PC 1
andyturpie Posted January 20, 2015 Author Posted January 20, 2015 Some great feedback I want to look to set up something for learning about MDT, SCCM and creating/testing GPOs etc. (not really looked at any of these things at all yet) I have quite a decent PC so was looking at maybe a VM of 2008r2 or 2012r2 and using PXE to boot a blank VM to take it through the OS install, driver install (granted a physical client will be better to test this) and application deployment. If anyone has recommendations on how to set this up it would be most welcome.
sted Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 Some great feedback I want to look to set up something for learning about MDT, SCCM and creating/testing GPOs etc. (not really looked at any of these things at all yet) I have quite a decent PC so was looking at maybe a VM of 2008r2 or 2012r2 and using PXE to boot a blank VM to take it through the OS install, driver install (granted a physical client will be better to test this) and application deployment. If anyone has recommendations on how to set this up it would be most welcome. not really tbh pxe booting a vm is just as valid it works exactly the same way the only difference is if your real network is vlanned or configured in such a way that it wont work but its better then to try it in a known working state like a vm anyway so at least you know what it should do/look like 1
andyturpie Posted January 20, 2015 Author Posted January 20, 2015 not really tbh pxe booting a vm is just as valid it works exactly the same way the only difference is if your real network is vlanned or configured in such a way that it wont work but its better then to try it in a known working state like a vm anyway so at least you know what it should do/look like Cheers Sted - What I did mean to say was only the driver deployment process would be better on physical as VMs don't really take drivers per say, so would look to strip the drivers out of a laptop whack them into SCCM and then test build it to see how it fares
themightymrp Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 Like you say, the driver install testing isn't going to be the most thorough of tests, but the rest should be easily possible. In Hyper-V (or whatever your choice), you would create 2 or more virtual machines and connect them using an internal/private virtual switch. This would be a software based switch which would allow the VM's to talk to each other but not the outside world - so effectively an isolated network. On one machine you can setup MDT/domain etc and on the other a PXE bootable client. If you have the power, no reason you couldn't run 3 VM's concurrently. I've done that before. 1
mdrabble Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 I use a 27" Mac with 32Gb Ram and 1TB drive running Parallels for testing Server stuff etc.... I CBA due booting to I'm running Win7 just for Elite until the Mac versions is released
MatthewL Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 I have a number of VM's on my PC but it's starting to struggle, I do have a MicroServer which I am in the process of rebuilding and looking to purchase some new hardware/second hand to have a dedicated well spec'd virtual server so I can test stuff out without affecting other stuff.
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