Max's Miscellaneous Musings

All sorts of things have been happening, work-wise.  It's reminded me that I need to keep my skills up to date.  I've decided it's time to update my MCSE to an MCITP:EA.  I've also decided I need to get some other specialties under my belt.  To this end, I'm learning about VMware vSphere, with a view to doing the VCP certification.  I've also decided that I really ought to round it out with a CCNA (I've only studied the CCNA coursework, oh, about half a dozen times in the last ten years.. funnily enough, for things other than certification).

Now, I've been using VMware products in some form or another even since they started (around 1998, from memory).  I used the VMware products to create test labs so that I could do my NT4 and 2000 MCSE study.  Back then, VMware (which later became a separate product called VMware Workstation) was in its infancy.  It was a handy tool, useful for test labs and such, but was still pretty green.  Much has changed between then and now, with VMware becoming a world leader in virtualisation.

I had an opportunity to learn about VMware's vSphere 4 platform a few years back and turned it down.  I should've realised that it was the Next Big Thing and gone with it.  Instead, I thought "meh" and moved on with my life.  This is completely in line with how I judge things that later turn out to be HUGE.  Here are a few of the things that, over the years, I've looked at and thought "who'd ever use that":

1. Sharepoint
2. NetApp and other SAN and SAN-like products
3. Facebook/Twitter/Myspace/any other variation on social networking
4. iPhones (words my missus will never let me forget I said: "A phone should just be a phone")
5. iPads (I still stand by my judgement that this is an unnecessary thing, but the world disagrees with me)

In my defence, I always did think that Google and Amazon would turn out to be huge.  However, here's a tip for you:  If ever you come up with an idea and want to know if it's a world-changer, just ask me.  If my answer is "meh", GO FOR IT!  You'll make a fortune, and I'll be able to say "I knew that person back when they were nothing!"

Anyhow.  Back to VMware.

I snaffled a workmate's course material from when he did the VMware vSphere course.  Just the first few chapters really opened my eyes about this family of products and what it can do for businesses.  I'm very excited about it now.  So excited that I've signed myself up for the vSphere course.  Lotsa $$$ that work can't afford, so it's come out of my pocket.    However, I think it will do me the world of good professionally and also intellectually.

I've spent the last few days setting up a VMware test lab.  Trying to do this on a budget of zero dollars, my first strategy was to try to set up an ESXi server as a guest inside VMware Workstation.  Believe it or not, this is technically possible, and it does actually seem to work.  However, there are a few challenges with this:

1. RAM.  I've got 8GB in my machine, and ESXi wants 2GB just for itself.  It also needs a vCenter server set up, which means an x64 server-class OS installed in another guest.  Goodbye another 1GB of RAM.  Actually, 2GB, because it will also need an instance of SQL Server Express, and 1GB just aint enough.  Then there's the RAM for my host machine to do what it needs to do (because I have lots of other windows open researching this and that).  And finally, the ESXi guest will eventually need more RAM allocated to it so that I can create some actual guests on it.  8GB just aint cutting it, and the fallback (paging) is just killing the disk with IOPS.
2. Disk space.  100GB free sounds like a lot until you start allocating it to VMs here and there.
3. Performance.  Oy.  With the two points above, it should be no surprise that it runs like a bag of crap.  Also, the ESXi "host" keeps losing its connection to the network.
4. Realism.  I can try and keep it all on the one piece of hardware, but I just don't think that's going to cut it.

As much as I've been trying to avoid it, I think I will have to create a lab of physical machines to properly round out my education.  Fortunately for me, I have plenty of Cisco crap already so it's going to be all about the VMware lab.

I'm going to have to do a bit more learning before I decide on an ideal lab, but I'm thinking one host machine with lots of RAM and a 2TB disk (newsflash: ESX can't cope with larger disks), plus a second machine running something like OpenFiler to act as a quasi-SAN for testing the HA/DRS/vMotion etc capabilities of vSphere.  I suspect this lab will grow as my curiosity grows, but it's a decent start.  And it will, of course, be strung together with all my spare Cisco gear.

Anyway... that's what's going on with me at the moment.  I must go now, I have much VMware-related web browsing to do.