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Home Lab with NSX-T – 2022

Purpose

This lab is an addition to my first lab. I’m calling it the Lab 2022 edition, but it’s basically the same lab as before, with 1 additional SuperMicro server. I wanted to add NSX-T and a few other components to my overall lab, and I needed the extra pCPUs.

I built out this setup with a vmware home lab in mind. I wanted to run esxi 7 on my baremetal server, then nest everything from there. I need it to be beefy enough to handle multiple nested environments, NSXT, Avi (NSX Advanced Load Balancer), Tanzu kubernetes Grid (tkg), and any other small things that I want to run. Also, I did not want to have anything that was too loud, or used too much electricity, or had a requirement to be rack mounted. Honestly, I think dollar for dollar, you can get more out of your system if you pick a traditional rack mounted server… but it will be noisier and use more electricity and require a rack, obviously 🙂

My setup is simple, everything fits into a mini tower, which takes up about 6u worth of space. You can actually get 2 of them in a rack for about 6u total.. I purchased and setup the SuperMicro initially without the rack enclosure. And if you’re following these guides to setup your own environment, you definitely don’t need to do the rack setup. I just found that in the end, it looked a little neater, since most of the wires can be hidden in the back of the box.

Lab Specs

  • SuperMicro
    • 8c – 16 Threaded
    • 256 GB Memory
    • 4 TB SSD Storage
  • Total Lab Capacity
    • 16c – 32 Threaded
    • 512 GB Memory
    • 8 TB SSD Storage

Interested in building your home lab?

Check out these tutorials on how to install/setup each of the components.

  • Home Lab Component List – List of parts to buy for this home lab setup.
  • Network Diagram – This should give you a pretty good idea of the nested setup

Step by Step Guide to build your home lab

  1. Build the SuperMicro Server – Some pictures of the build process
  2. Installing ESXi on SuperMicro – This is the old guide, but it’s the exact same. Just a newer version of code. Use the newest version available.
  3. Configure NTP on the ESXi Hosts – Configure it on all physical and nested esxi hosts/vms.
  4. Configuring the BareMetal ESXi7 – Network settings, storage, etc..
  5. Deploy a DNS Server – I’m using a simple bind/named dns server running on Centos8
  6. Configuring nested ESXi VMs – Deploy the 3 nested ESXI vms
  7. Deploying vCenter and vSAN on nested ESXi – Deploy the vCenter appliance and configure vSAN
  8. Create NSX Distributed Switch – Create Distributed switch in vCenter.
  9. Deploy vyos router – For iBGP between home network and overlay network
  10. Deploy NSX-T – Deploy and configure NSX Manager and Edge
  11. Troubleshooting NSX-T
  12. Upgrading to 10Gb Links – From 1Gb to 10Gb between the Physical SuperMicro hosts

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Recent Posts

  • Avi – Secure your application with the Avi Web Application Firewall (WAF)
  • Avi – API Parameters and Filters
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  • Avi – Setup users and assign custom roles
  • Upgrading to 10Gb links between the SuperMicros

About

My name is Matt Adam and I’m a Product Manager at Broadcom (Formerly VMware).

I support the NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi Networks) with a focus on containers and Kubernetes. I have a background in load balancing, automation, development, and public cloud.

© 2023 Matt Adam