42 Responses

  1. Jumbo Frames on vSphere 5 « Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] Additional details regarding My Lab Environment. […]

  2. vSphere 5 HA Complete Failure Experience « Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] of you who have read about My Lab Environment know I run some pretty serious kit. But unfortunately this is not housed in a robust commercial […]

  3. arielantigua
    arielantigua at |

    Can you post some picture of this? Looks like you are having so much fun in that LAB!!!

    Congrats!

    Reply
  4. Josh Odgers (VCDX#90
    Josh Odgers (VCDX#90 at |

    Looking forward to comparing notes on the FusionIO benefits.

    Get some VMware view goodness into your lab!

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      I've got VMware View 5.0. I use it for remote access and testing.

      Reply
  5. Sweet home lab
    Sweet home lab at |

    […] […]

  6. Artur Krzywdzinski (
    Artur Krzywdzinski ( at |

    AWESOME lab man

    Reply
  7. Anuj Modi
    Anuj Modi at |

    Lot of hardwork has been done in planning such a beautiful lab…hats off !!

    Reply
  8. kunaludapi
    kunaludapi at |

    Awesome…

    Reply
    1. kunaludapi
      kunaludapi at |

      "Server room" is in your bed room.

      Reply
  9. Joe
    Joe at |

    Have fun replacing that every 3-4 years when the SAN and switches become obsolete.

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      There is a good chance it'll last for more than 5 years given I bought enterprise class equipment, but in any case I replace and enhance some of it each year and spread the investment over multiple years to avoid a massive single year hit.

      Reply
  10. jasonboche (@jasonbo
    jasonboche (@jasonbo at |

    That is an amazing lab! Very nice!

    Reply
  11. Gert
    Gert at |

    Awesome lab….

    Reply
  12. IO Blazing Datastore Performance with Fusion-io « Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] the testing I used two of the Dell T710 Westmere X5650 (2 x 6 Core @ 2.66GHz) based systems from My Lab Environment, each with 1 x ioDrive2 1.2TB Fusion-io card installed in an 8X Gen2 PCIe slot. I configured the […]

  13. elvisnld
    elvisnld at |

    Great lab! Thanks for sharing ..

    How's the noise level with all those 19" dell's and so many 15k disks. Because this is the one thing most bothering me in my own lab.

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      Actually not that bad since I put it in the rack. But if your used to quiet then it is pretty noisy. The FC switch and CX500 array is very noisy though and so I don't have that turned on much. Plus it uses heaps of power.

      Reply
      1. elvisnld
        elvisnld at |

        Thanks for commenting!

        Mmmhhh, i'm thinking of moving the stuff over to a friend, which has plenty of space. But i'm not quit sure if i'm gonna feel happy with working on the lab only from a remote location. Actually that's something i've never seen much on the net. Either it's a "Home"lab or a dc (co)location.

        Putting it in a DC seems to much hassle (limitations) and to expensive (around $ 149 – 169 a month).

        A remote (friends) location only would cost me a inet-uplink, i guess $ 39,- month and some electricity comp. *

        * My Power consumption is moderate, between 270 – 480 watts (@ 230 volts offcourse)

        i have 3 HP ML110G7 's as phy hosts, 1 big supermicro, 2x passive cooled cisco gbit sw, and one qnap 8xx (tier 4 like you) Main storage is a Nexenta zfs as vsa (with pass-through storage) and as secondary 2x HP

        p4000 vsa's (mirrored R10)

        Your correct to think "that's not 100% hcl stuff .. " Allthough i've had no single issue anywhere yet. At the time of starting the lab it was budget vs hcl.

        Well, enough off-topic raming for now i guess 🙂

  14. David Klee (@kleegee
    David Klee (@kleegee at |

    Fantastic lab! I'm super happy to see more people with great home setups. Great job!

    Reply
  15. Episode 61–VCDX « APAC Virtualization Podcast
  16. Alessandro
    Alessandro at |

    Hi mate,

    Do you know where can i get those vault disks for Clariion CX500? I have a CX500 but no vault… Sad… 🙁

    Cheers

    Reply
    1. @vcdxnz001
      @vcdxnz001 at |

      Hi Allesandro, I'm not sure where you can get the vault disks or how to create them. Have you tried looking for the procedure on EMC PowerLink? Perhaps you could find some spare parts on EBay or similar site.

      Reply
  17. Matt Heldstab
    Matt Heldstab at |

    Michael. Thanks for all the hard work and effort to support the virtualization community. I reference your blogs at least once per month.

    Reply
  18. » IO Blazing Single VM Storage Performance with Micron and Fusion-io Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] testing I used two of the Dell T710 Westmere X5650 (2 x 6 Core @ 2.66GHz) based systems from My Lab Environment, one with 1 x ioDrive2 1.2TB and 1 x ioDrive1 640GB Fusion-io cards installed and the other with […]

  19. Iwan 'e1'
    Iwan 'e1' at |

    Whoa! This is the mother of all home lab. You need to get it registered for guiness book record mate! I'm fortunate to be able to use VMware ASEAN lab as my den.

    Reply
  20. adamrushuk
    adamrushuk at |

    That's one serious Mutha of a Home Lab! This must cost a fortune to run!

    Reply
  21. Karthic
    Karthic at |

    Awesome Michael Webster, I wish to have like this.

    Reply
  22. VNXDude
    VNXDude at |

    Probably one of the most unreasonable home labs I have ever seen just from a hardware cost and power consumption point of view. Also, putting two Fusion-io 1.2 TB cards into a home lab a la "may make them permanent" is total BS. No one in their right mind puts two multi-thousand dollar PCIe SSDs into a home lab which will never ever see enough load to come even close to needing that type of performance. To me this looks like a sensationalist attention-grabbing post.

    Reply
  23. » New Adventure to Redefine Radically Simple Architecture for Business Critical Apps with Nutanix Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] and Josh was joining, I really wanted to know more and to see if I could get a block to test for my home lab. I also started to see Nutanix pop up at events in New Zealand and Australia, and was able to speak […]

  24. » VMware Storage vMotion, Data Movers, Thin Provisioning, Barriers to Monster VM’s Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] them. This was so they don’t take up space on my higher more valuable tiers of storage (See my lab environment). I hear you saying, so what could possibly cause a problem with […]

  25. Nutanix: The Big Red Easy Button for Oracle Databases – Part 1 | Nutanix

    […] been setting up Nutanix NX-3450 block in my lab environment, as the foundation of my testing. Preparing the VMware vSphere 5.5 environment and configuring it […]

  26. » Nutanix: The Big Red Easy Button for Oracle Databases – Part 1 Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] been setting up Nutanix NX-3450 block in my lab environment, as the foundation of my testing. Preparing the VMware vSphere 5.5 environment and configuring it […]

  27. » VMware vSphere 5.5 Virtual Storage Adapter Performance Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] 5.5. I haven’t seen anything published by VMware so I thought I’d do my own testing in my home lab. This is a very brief article to share with you the results I found. Please note: My testing is […]

  28. Baby Dragon Triplets – VSAN Home Lab | vcdx133.com

    […] Dragon home labs: Michael Webster, David Klee, Jason […]

  29. » The VMware View from the Horizon at 38,000 Feet and 8000 Miles Away Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] barriers and provide massive business value. Before we start the story you might like to check out my home lab environment. This is where my VMware View virtual desktop is located (Windows 8.1). My environment is connected […]

  30. » Evolution of My Home Area Network (HAN) to Leaf Spine Architecture Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] have an ordinary home network. Most people are happy with a simple WIFI access point. But for me, my home lab and home network is serious business. It’s where I perform all my testing for my work, […]

  31. Why SSDs over HDDs for the Home Lab: The Ocelot Edition | Wahl Network

    […] It’s very difficult to gleam all of the rated performance of flash devices from a storage array. The big guys do it by arming their boxes with a mixture of massive amounts of CPU, RAM, PCIe cards, and software wizardry that takes advantage of all these hardware resources. This is rarely an option in a home lab unless you’re Jason Boche or Michael Webster. […]

  32. » Switch Debugging via Console Cable Connected to VDI Desktop from 9000 Miles Away Long White Virtual Clouds

    […] been having a few weird things go on in my network with my home lab and from time to time the engineers I’m working with on this problem have asked me to run […]

  33. Scrap Lab - Home lab for the cheap - Michael Ryom

    […] Even thought I really would like to, having this kind of equipment at home, is too noise, expensive … […]

  34. Andrew
    Andrew at |

    Do you have recurring licensing costs?

    Reply

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