Diving Deep: Veeam + VMware edition
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At our company, we are currently hosting 3 ESXi hosts (2@hub, 1 offsite) running Veaam 7.0 backup. I'm just a lowly Help Desk Tech with aspirations of learning the VM infrastructure in and out.
I would love to learn everything there is about this environment, besides the whitepapers, what would you all advice as a good "beginners guide" to becoming an expert?
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You can build your own VMWare server using the free version for testing. You can get trial versions of Windows 2012 R2 for building test VMs. If you have an extra PC (needs to be newer) there's a good chance ESXi will install on it for testing purposes.
Veeam has a 30 day trial option that you could install on your workstation to backup your VMs and learn how it works.
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@Dashrender I think we should try to build VMware server
thought its nice things to Play with. -
Back in the ESXi 4.x days I used an old desktop. I think ESXi now requires VT-d or VT-x which a lot of system even today don't have. Scott would know more about this though.
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@Dashrender said:
Back in the ESXi 4.x days I used an old desktop. I think ESXi now requires VT-d or VT-x which a lot of system even today don't have. Scott would know more about this though.
It has been required for some time. Old ESX ran out of software but now the processors do the heavy lifting. Nearly all chips today support it though. Most desktops will have support.
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VMware and Veeam are definitely products that you can start using at home.
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I built a custom desktop. Make sure board and CPU have virtualization capabilities. I bet you would have a hard time finding one that doesn't but still, make sure...I loaded ESXi 5.0 on it. Then just play. Hands-on is worth more than any book. Together, a book and hands-on experience are invaluable.
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@ajstringham said:
I built a custom desktop. Make sure board and CPU have virtualization capabilities. I bet you would have a hard time finding one that doesn't but still, make sure...I loaded ESXi 5.0 on it. Then just play. Hands-on is worth more than any book. Together, a book and hands-on experience are invaluable.
Nothing beats doing stuff yourself at home. You get so much more experience.
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I used an old laptop for my first lab. It weigh 4kg, however it's surprisingly fast enough to run my low test workloads after minor upgrades
Speaking about Veeam, at home I use a 180-day NFR license to open the full functionality (http://go.veeam.com/free-nfr-backup-management-suite.html) - it's not for production, it's only for learning purposes. I also recommend to take a look at free video trainings from Veeam University that in your case might also be helpful - http://www.veeam.com/backup-replication-university.html
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Good NFR link, thanks @maria-levkina
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We need a sticky page for links like that!
