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.

Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-5-Infrastructure Services

 In my previous post Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-4-virtual router, we configured complete underlay networking for our Nested SDDC, We will do BGP configuration  once we advance thru the lab.

As now we have Compute, Storage and Network ready, we need the infrastructure services, such as DNS, Active Directory and NTP.

We need to install one windows server which will serve as an active directory, DNS and iSCSi server for our setup.

In order to install the windows server, we would need windows server ISO. Now we will start installation of the server.

We will login to the ESXi server we installed, https://youresxiIP and use "root" credentials for login.

We will use the same steps as we used in deploying CSR1000v in our previous post and we will deploy it on the management network. We will use below mentioned IPs for our servers.

Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-4-virtual router

 

In my previous post HomeLab Step-by-Step Part-3-Networking, we have completed configuration of required port groups, datastore etc. Now we are ready to start deployment of virtual router.

We will be creating a network topology shown in this image.

Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-3-Networking

In my previous post Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-2-Hostconfig we configured the IP address on our physical ESXi host, and now we are ready to configure networks required for our nested SDDC.

Below table shows the list of VLANs we will configure, and we have named each vlan as per its use.

Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-2-Hostconfig

 

Let’s start from where we left in Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-1-HostInstallation.

Once ESXi installation is complete, you will be presented with this screen, here press F2 to start initial configuration of ESXi.

Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-1-HostInstallation

Getting started with base infrastructure for home LAB

Technology is evolving each day, and to keep up with the momentum VMware is coming up with upgrades/updates of the VMware portfolio products.

 

To stay upto date with the latest versions, hosting a lab has become a necessity, but what I saw most of the IT practitioners, who are not from infrastructure domain face challenges setting up their labs.

 

Well it wouldn’t be an issue anymore, I am going to lay down step by step instructions on how to setup your home LAB with just one ESXi.