A VMware NSX home lab is a powerful tool for learning and mastering the VMware NSX platform. By setting up and experimenting with a simulated environment, you can gain hands-on experience with the product and develop the skills needed to design, deploy, and manage virtual networks in a production environment.
I put my first NSX home lab together over seven years ago when I was new to virtualization. Now it’s time to repeat the process in a series of knowledge-sharing articles.
I can’t think of anyone more qualified to help on the hardware side than Mike from the awesome vswitchzero YouTube channel. Mike has been creating engaging retro computer hardware content that I enjoy. If you’re not following him, I highly recommend you check him out.
Mike was able to source me this Dell Precision 5810 Media Workstation Desktop. Isn’t the Run VMware NSX sticker a nice touch?
It is the 14 core Intel Xeon processor version:
- Precision Tower 5810
- 14 CPUs x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2660 v4 @ 2.00GHz
- 128GB of RAM
- 240GB SSD
- 1 TB SSD
- Quad port Intel i340-T4 network adapter
- ESXi8.0.0
With a few test VMs in place, it looks like this:
A NSX environment needs a design, which will be the focus of the next article.