irgNET – LAB 3.0
Welcome to the 2nd major update of my Home Lab. In the last small update we talked about resource limitations, which we will break now.
I have purchased a HP DL380p Gen8 12 LFF with 12x 3.5″ disk bays, 64GB memory, 4x 1Gbit Ethernet as well as 1x 1Gbit iLO with a datastore of 4TB.
First task: implement and discover VMware vCenter.
vCenter Server is the centralized management utility for VMware and is used to manage virtual machines, multiple ESXi hosts and all dependent components from a single centralized location.
So I added my two ESXi hosts to the freshly rolled out VMware vCenter to manage everything from there. For further tasks and updates we will need the VMware vMotion feature:
VMware vMotion (live migration)
Live migration (vMotion) in ESX allows a virtual machine to move between two different hosts. Live storage migration (Storage vMotion) enables live migration of virtual disks on the fly.
During vMotion Live Migration (vLM) of the (RAM) memory of the VM is sent from the running VM to the new VM (the instance on another host that will become the running VM after the vLM). The content of memory is by its nature changing all the time. ESX uses a system where the content is sent to the other VM and then it will check what data is changed and send that, each time smaller blocks. At the last moment it will very briefly ‘freeze’ the existing VM, transfer the last changes in the RAM content and then start the new VM. The intended effect of this process is to minimize the time during which the VM is suspended; in a best case this will be the time of the final transfer plus the time required to start the new VM.
For more Information: https://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server.html & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCenter
In addition to VMware vCenter, I have provided several gaming servers to my friends, for example for Conan Exiles and Minecraft.
Hardware List:
FRITZ!WLAN Mesh Repeater 3000: https://amzn.to/3jfI0R0
HPE 1820-24G (Follow-up product): https://amzn.to/3CB1HeO
HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 (Follow-up product): https://amzn.to/2UsaWwI
FRITZ!Box 6660 (Follow-up product): https://amzn.to/3yUYAfF
