Want to build a VM lab environment, but use it also as a home PC

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Thread: Want to build a VM lab environment, but use it also as a home PC

  1. #1
    Catfish
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    225

    Want to build a VM lab environment, but use it also as a home PC

    Hi guys,

    For my lab, I need to be able to nest virtual machines. That is, run several virtual machines inside one virtual machine.
    If I install Windows 8 and then VMWare 9, I believe I won't be able to assign properly the resources to the nested virtual machines, that would run all under, let's say, a Debian VM.
    Or will I?
    Is it more convenient to run:
    1) On physicall hardware: Windows 8
    2) A VM based on another copy of Windows 8, which will in turn run VMWare Workstation 9, which will then assign resources to each of the individual VMs.

    Or...
    Is there any hyper visualizer that would allow me to run a Windows 8 virtual machine and have it perform properly under games, for example?

    What do you guys recommend?

    Thanks.

  2. #2
    Great White Shark
    Join Date
    Nov 2000
    Location
    Alpharetta, Denial, Only certain songs.
    Posts
    9,925
    Pretty much none of the current hypervisors that I can think of will offer "good enough" 3D hardware acceleration pass through to allow modern games to be played at reasonable frame rates.

    Are you simply looking for the ability to run things like flash/facebook games? Or actual games like say Portal, CoD, Diablo 3, etc.?

    What is the lab setup you are planning on? how many nodes in your cluster? What kind of storage?

    Crusader for the 64-bit Era.
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  3. #3
    Hammerhead Shark
    Join Date
    Mar 2001
    Location
    Littleton, CO
    Posts
    2,704
    To the best of my knowledge neither VMware nor MS support nesting hypervisors, either. I believe it is possible with VMware (though unsupported), but I don't know that it's worth doing.

    Anyway, your ideal setup probably depends on your needs and budget, but you probably want a standalone "lab pc" running something like ESXi or Hyper-V. Or you want to just run VMware workstation on Windows 7/8 with your lab machines installed inside there. If you give more information re: what you are trying to do, we might be able to provide more information.
    Nick_B
    Currently running Ubuntu and Windows 7.

  4. #4
    Expensive Sushi
    Join Date
    Dec 2014
    Posts
    19
    Creating your own full featured VMware vSphere lab for either home or work does not need to be as expensive as you at first think. Sure, there is the initial outlay for the hardware but after you have purchase/acquired/liberated this you will be in good shape (depending on the specification of your hardware and whether it will run ESX/ESXi) for some time.

    In this ‘build you own VMware vSphere lab’ series I will be co-posting with Simon (yes, two of us called Simon ) from vinf.net. I will cover the topic parts 1-5 below along with 12 and Simon (the other one) will take it from there covering topics such as running nested ESX instances and VMware Fault Tolerance (FT). This series will provide a step by step guide from the basics of the hardware configuration right, installing and configuring shared storage through to running Lab Manager on your home lab.

    The intention is to release these posts over a period of time though we thought we’d map out the journey so you can see what’s coming up which will hopefully whet you appetite for building your own VMware vSphere lab either at home or work.
    Last edited by bestellen; 12-30-2015 at 12:34 PM.

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