Ask Slashdot: Computer Test Lab Set-Up For Home?

An anonymous reader writes "For as long as I've been playing around with computers I've had a home test lab. I found it to be a great learning tool. However, I haven't invested much money into it lately and because of aging hardware I can't get what I want out of it anymore. So a revamp is in order. I've looked into several cloud vendors for a box I can rent to do some virtualization, but it doesn't seem to be cost effective or practical. What are your thoughts on it? What set-up do you have at home for tinkering? Have you looked into hosted solutions for this?"

Comments

Virtualize

[QuantumRiff]

Buy a computer.. Put >8GB of ram in it (i would recommend 2GB per VM, and 2GB for the host). Maybe some nice fast disks..

Load VMWare ESXi, or another OS and virtual machine software of your choice..

The ability to snapshot and restore things will save you so much time testing things, you'll wonder how you used to get things done before. Maybe, setup a second system or laptop for things like wireless testing, drivers, etc.. things you can't simulate in a VM.. but with the virtual networks in most VM's, you can setup some very, very complex networks...

Re:Virtualize

[addikt10]

I agree with Virtualization (really, it is a must for any lab).
If your budget is low, crank up the specs on your desktop machine, and use VMWare Workstation (or some such).

If you budget is a bit higher, get that machine and dedicate it with Xen Server or vSphere (or whatever)

Higher yet? Get a couple of boxes, and an iSCSI solution so that you can support clusters (iSCSI is much cheaper than fibrechannel, and you can do windows clustering as well as your virtualization platform clustering.)

You want brands? I did it with generic computing hardware (24GB core i7 boxes) and a Thecus iSCSI solution (because I didn't want to take the time to build the iSCSI myself). WD RE4 drives. Get funky with quad-port Intel NICS and a linksys switch that supports VLANS.
Make sure to get a Microsoft TechNet subscription if you are working with Microsoft platforms.
Have fun.

Gonna grow it? Start with VMware Workstation. The VMs you create can migrate to dedicated virtualization platforms as you move up in expenditures.

Re:Virtualize

[jtdennis]

ESXi is free for a basic featureset. For a low budget, I'd recommend it over Workstation which isn't free. If you're working on the same box as your VM host, then maybe Virtualbox would work for a free solution.