Category: Test Lab
I have decided to build a new test lab at home based on VMware architecture so that I can test and learn new technologies which I don’t always get a chance to play with at work. I have decided to go with a two physical host approach and use my existing Synology DS1813+ NAS for the storage. Because I want to simulate a physical network as much as possible, I am using a Cisco SG300-10 layer 3 switch to perform all of the management of all of the VLANs and the routing between them and my home network.
I am currently in the process of purchasing all of the hardware and building the lab. Below are all of the details of what my final test lab will look and the reasonings behind why I have made the decisions I have….
If you are installing VMware ESXi on a server \ computer, sometimes you might run into a problem where ESXi cannot detect a Network Adapter (NIC) and therefore will not allow you to continue the installation. The reason for this is because the native ESXi installer does not contain the drivers for the NIC you have installed. This is the situation I found myself in recently when building an ESXi host in my home test lab.
To resolve this problem, we need to inject the drivers into the VMware ESXi installer image and therefore create a custom VMware ESXi image. Although this sounds hard, it is actually pretty easy. Below are the steps required to achieve this…