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Now, in general, as we take a look at building a nested NSX lab,

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there are a lot of benefits in building a lab environment.

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Things like getting hands-on practice or the ability to revert back to a

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previous state

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so you can try something again or a slightly different way

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without having to rebuild the entire environment from scratch.

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Initially, when I went to go ahead and deploy NSX in my lab environment

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back here on my four Dell R630 rack servers behind me,

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there was a teeny little hiccup

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and the lifecycle manager completely would not cooperate
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and the lifecycle manager completely would not cooperate

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and I was dead in the water.

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So I learned early on that I needed a simple and easy way

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to go ahead and have a baseline for a lab environment all set up

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and then I could revert to if I needed to.

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So one of the benefits of building a nested NSX lab environment

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is that we can revert as needed,

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which is super important,

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especially if there's dozens of hours involved in getting it up to a certain

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baseline state.

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And of course, another benefit of having a lab at your fingertips

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is so you can get hands-on practice as needed.

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And although it's true, you get a lot of hands-on practice
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And although it's true, you get a lot of hands-on practice

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if you're building a whole lab from scratch.

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Once you've installed vCenter like five or six times,

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you've done it and you no longer need to do it over and over again.

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So you want a base infrastructure or you can start building on that

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infrastructure

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and implement the NSX.

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And also part of the revert as needed implies snapshots.

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Now, by default, the NSX manager itself, when you deploy it,

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does not allow snapshots.

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However, with a couple of little hacks,

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we can go ahead and modify that for our lab environment

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so that snapshots will be allowed.
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so that snapshots will be allowed.

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And that's going to be a key component in being able to roll back the entire

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config

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whenever we need to.

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So some of the popular options for setting up a nested NSX lab environment

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would include running it in VMware Workstation

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or VMware Fusion on a Mac.

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But I found that the problem with that is that many times

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there's going to be resource requirements that are above and beyond

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what a single machine can provide.

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For example, if we're in VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion

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and we have 32 gigs of RAM on our system,
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and we have 32 gigs of RAM on our system,

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there may be times and there probably are going to be times

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when we're going to need more RAM than that.

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So all of that can be an option for building a VMware nested lab environment

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on VMware Workstation.

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I would recommend the option of building it on top of an ESXi environment.

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Now, if we're using an ESXi host as the home for our nested environment,

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we still may have some limitations regarding capacity.

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So in addition to using ESXi,

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I would also recommend using vSphere in combination with vCenter,

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the vCenter server appliance.
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the vCenter server appliance.

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And that way we can set up two or three ESXi hosts

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and then run features like DRS, distributed resource scheduler

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and use options like VMotion,

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presuming we have shared storage that we're using.

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And that way we can leverage the resources of two or three physical hosts

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to support our nested environment.

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So for the implementation of a nested lab that's based on vSphere

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with a vCenter server,

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that's going to presume that you have some basic knowledge of working with v

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Center
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and the vSphere client and are aware of features like vMotion and DRS

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that we can leverage in a vSphere environment.

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So also, let's talk about the physical host for ESXi.

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What I have in my lab environment, I've got some R630s that I have had for a

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long time.

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And so the actual CPUs in those rack mounted servers,

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even though they're not officially supported by VMware for a production

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environment,

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they run vSphere version eight like a champ.

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And the only negative I've experienced is the fact that when I do the initial

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install

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of the ESXi host software on one of these servers,
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of the ESXi host software on one of these servers,

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is that it gives me a little warning saying the CPU is not fully supported,

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which I accept and continue on and away I go.

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And a lot of these rack mounted servers can be acquired for like under $500.

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And the biggest distraction with these rack servers is oftentimes the noise

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and most of that noise comes from the fans.

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So using the iDRAC feature on these Dell R630s and also other Dell rack mounted

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servers,

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we can use iDRAC and actually control the fan.

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So what I do is I load my rack servers up, get them pretty busy,
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So what I do is I load my rack servers up, get them pretty busy,

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then I take a look at the temperatures,

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courtesy of iDRAC that can tell me exactly the temperatures involved,

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and then I just the fans low enough so it's not too noisy and at the same time,

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I'm not destroying the hardware based on temperatures getting too hot.

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So for a lab environment being able to acquire a blade server with quite a bit

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of RAM

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at a fairly low price is a great option for a nested lab environment.

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Now another element going into this I'd like to make you aware of is some

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important prep work

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and resources that we'd want to have available.

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So we'd want to have some hardware resources where we could actually build the
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So we'd want to have some hardware resources where we could actually build the

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nested NSX lab.

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And we'd also want to have some system where we can set up a records in DNS.

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So in my lab environment, I'm using a Windows server, but you could use Linux

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or something else as well.

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But having DNS at your fingertips for your lab environment is an important

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aspect.

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We're also going to want to have time synchronization available using NTP.

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So you could also take care of that in-house inside your lab environment

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or you could reach out to an internet resource to one of the public NTP pools

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to synchronize time.

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But either way DNS services and time synchronization are going to be important
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But either way DNS services and time synchronization are going to be important

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for success in your lab environment.

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Another important consideration is licensing.

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So what are we going to need licensing for?

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We're going to need licensing for ESXi hosts, for vCenter, for the NSX

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components,

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including NSX Manager and more.

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And the best way, if you're building a home lab environment to get the

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licensing that's needed

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for that is a VMUG Advantage membership.

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That's the VM user group.

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That's the VMUG acronym.

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So once you sign up for the VMUG Advantage membership, again, that's about $200
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So once you sign up for the VMUG Advantage membership, again, that's about $200

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US a year,

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then they've got some steps you can follow where you can actually get the EVAL

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licenses.

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And again, those licenses are good for a year, which is more than enough time

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for a lab environment.

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The only negative there with the VMUG Advantage licensing is that the actual

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software you have for NSX,

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it's a non-export license, meaning that at the end of the day,

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it's not going to support features like VPNs, Layer 2 VPNs or IPsec VPNs.

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But most of the other features, including global manager functionality,

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is going to be available as part of the licensing and software you get as part
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is going to be available as part of the licensing and software you get as part

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of the VMUG Advantage program.

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Now, another important aspect regarding prep work is we need to have Internet

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access,

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which also implies network address translation.

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So what I've got here in my office, I've got a management network that goes to

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a default gateway at .1,

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which does network address translation and then provides access out to the

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Internet.

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And then there's one last piece I want to chat about as far as prep work goes,

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and that is we are going to need a top of rack switch.

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And the primary function for that top of rack switch is going to be the feature
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And the primary function for that top of rack switch is going to be the feature

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of doing trunking.

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So if you have a top of rack switch that supports Layer 2 trunking

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and can also support logical Layer 3 routing, that'd be fantastic.

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So in my lab environment, I'm using an $80 switch.

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You might say, "Well, Keith, what can we really get for $80?"

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Well, check this out.

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If you get a Cisco 3750, now these were manufactured, I don't know, over a

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decade ago,

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and they're now end of life, over like $80, you can get a 3750, which is a
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and they're now end of life, over like $80, you can get a 3750, which is a

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multi-layer switch,

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which can do routing and switching.

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And it's my primary tool that I use in my rack environment, and that was a

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whopping $80.

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And again, that's a Cisco Catalyst 3750 switch.

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And that is a 48 port switch, and those are gigabit ports.

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And there's also a module in the one I happen to get, which has two 10 gig

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ports as well.

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And the other thing I have in my lab environment is I have some shared storage.

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So if you want to use V-SAN, you can.

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I would recommend if you can do something else other than V-SAN for your lab
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I would recommend if you can do something else other than V-SAN for your lab

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environment, that's better.

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I'll tell you why.

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Once V-SAN is in place, you have three or four hosts supporting the V-SAN.

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It's not really simple to remove or change your network topology too much

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and move ESXi hosts in and out because they're relying on the hosts providing

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that V-SAN functionality.

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So what I did, I just got a Synology external network attached storage device,

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which I'm using my shared storage for my ESXi host in my cluster.

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So I wanted to mention a few of these elements right here up front.
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So I wanted to mention a few of these elements right here up front.

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And as we go through this together, I'm going to show you each and every part

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of exactly what I'm using

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to make this NSX lab environment work.

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In fact, let's go ahead in the next video and take a closer look at my top-of-

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rack switch environment

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and how I have it configured as part of my infrastructure for my nested lab.

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So I'll see you for that in the very next video.