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Tuesday 18 May 2021

Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-6-Nested-ESXi


In my previous post, Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-5-Infrastructure Services we have completed configuration of Active Directory, DNS and NTP (DC will serve as NTP), these are our infrastructure services.

Now we are ready for deployment of Nested ESXi servers. installation procedure is same as physical server however, there are few things we need to keep in mind while creating the VM for nested environment.

So lets start, login to the physical ESXi server with root credentials by navigating to https://"youresxiIP and under virtual machines select option Create VM.


On the create VM wizard select first option, create a new virtual machine.


Name the ESXi, Select the compatibility, Guest OS family and Guest OS version.


Select the datastore where we will be hosting this VM (ESXi)


Change the number of CPUs as per availability on the physical hardware, along with select the option for Hardware virtualization, check the box to expose hardware assisted virtualization to the guest OS.


Now increase the memory of the nested ESXi as per availability of chosen hardware. Along with select the shares value as low, and set the limit for memory.


Select the disk size as 10 GB for installation of esxi, change the port group for the network card to "nested trunk". Press next and on finish.

Right click on the virtual machine and power on the VM.


Open the vmrc console and attach the ESXi iso file same as we did in my post for windows server installation, and follow the ESXi installation steps as per my post for ESXi installation.

Once installation is complete, lets start configuration of the nested ESXi.

Press f2 on the console of the ESXi to enter in the system customization screen.


Enter the root credentials to login.


Select configure management network

Select option for vlan and enter the vlan ID for the management network, and press enter.


Select IPv4 configuration, assign the IP address and press enter.


Select DNS configuration, and provide DNS server IP which we created in my previous post and hit enter.


Select Custom DNS suffixes and provide the domain name which we created and hit enter.


Now press escape and y to confirm the restart of management network after configuration.


Now follow the same steps listed in this post to create second ESXi.

In my next post Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-7-Shared storage we will configure shared storage and vCenter for centralized management.

                                             
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18 comments:

  1. Hello Paddy,

    I just wanted to check with you on an issue which i am currently facing. If i define the VLAN ID as 1611 during the esxi configuration. i am facing the RTO if i ping the esxi01(172.16.11.101) .

    The ping failure is from both windows machine as well (172.16.11.1) and 192 network as well. if i dont define the VLAN ID the ping is successful of the nested esxi01.

    Is it mandatory to mention the VLAN ID?

    Can you please let me know what are the parameters i am missing due to which i am facing this issue.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear, it seems your network card is not connected to nested trunk port group. As vlan id would be required for the trunk port.
    Regards
    Paddy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello Paddy,

      Can you please point me to step in your blog post which i have missed. Apologies not able to locate the same in my setup.

      Regards,

      Delete
    2. "Select the disk size as 10 GB for installation of esxi, change the port group for the network card to "nested trunk". Press next and on finish."

      Delete
    3. Thanks a lot for your reply. I will check and let you know.

      Also could you please let me know which Network Interface do we need to connect the ADDC machine. ?

      Regards,

      Delete
    4. ADDC goes to management network (nested-esxi-mgmt-1611)

      Delete
  3. Hi,

    I am planning to setup Home Lab for vSphere and NSX. Can you please let me know if 64 GB RAM would be enough? I did search many sites but answer is not clear. Please assist.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Dear, it totally depends on what all use cases you wish to test. with 64 GB ram you can do LAB, but with very limited use cases. for example you would need one vCenter, NSX-T manager and edge nodes. now all these would be hosted on nested ESXi so even if you do these use cases with 2 nested hosts with 32 gig each, please consider RAM requirement of smallest form factor of above mentioned appliances. I hope it helps.

      Delete
  4. I followed your home lab setup and was successful. I have 2 physical pc's with 32gb of ram. I have 1 already setup per your lab. Can I install esxi on the 2nd pc and assign an ip and it be part of the nested environment?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Dear,

      You can very well do that, however to acheive it you need a physical network switch in between two devices. And instead of hosting nested port groups on a vSwitch without any uplink, connect vSwitch with uplink.

      Delete
    2. Thanks for the response. Can you give me an idea why the bandwidth is extremely slow in the nested environment? Speed test shows 1.6 meg adapters are 1.0gps. Is there something I can try? Been researching but getting nowhere, Thanks!

      Delete
    3. Dear, Its because of the basic license of CSR router, I am preparing a video on utilizing other free community router for better network performance to use in our lab.

      Delete
  5. Hi Dear, in your esx01 the desk capacity is 10GB, but I realize that the desk in nested esxi001 is 9TB, can you explain, i am confused?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dear GHassan,

      In both the nested esxis boot disk is 10GB.

      Delete
  6. Hi. Does anything change in this guide if we're installing ESXi inside our VMWARE Workstation setup? What are the important steps we should keep in mind in that case?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dear Serega, It doesnt change only difference is on nested ESXi you will create port groups, where name will have the vlan ID for understanding and segregation but not on the vlan ID field.

      Delete
  7. Also, how many NICs do we need to add to our nested ESXi hosts if we run them in vmware workstation? Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As its all virtual, it doesn't make much difference, but to avoid single uplink warning (no redundancy) I would recommend adding at least 2 NICs.

      Delete

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