I'm currently in the process of consolidating many of our servers using ESX 3.5. Here's our current setup: 4 HP DL360 G5 servers connected to an Equallogic iSCSI SAN via a Cisco 3750 1gb switch. Everything is set up, so I'm in the process of moving VM's over to the SAN. In the middle of this, my company picked has up a new contract to support VMWare for a client, and so I've been asked to setup a VMWare "test lab" to train some of the support staff on. My question is, what would be the best way to do this? They don't need much as far as resources, just basically want to practice creating VM's, basic stuff, etc. There will be probably 6 people who will need to access it from 2 separate geographic locations. Any ideas? Is there a way to accomplish this on our new setup? Or should a completely different instance be used? If using the new equipment, obviously my concern is keeping them from being able to touch any of our production stuff.
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VMW test environment
- Thread starter timeiu79
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The FastTrack training course from VMware I took was different than many of the other training programs I have taken. Normally, when I get trained on a product, I go to a conference room that has pre built systems to be used for the training. These pre built system could be laptops (one or two depending on the product being taught) or even a mini rack with some classroom servers in them. VMWare however provided non of this at all, the classroom had only dumb terminals in it.
We used Citrix to connect to their office in Palo Alto, CA. to establish a remote terminal session. From there, we used the HP (Compaq) ILO to take control of a server they had setup and set aside for training purpose to be used for the installation of ESX in the classroom. Once ESX was installed on our server, we would setup a VI client to continue with the ESX training, and use Putty to establish SSH session for command line training in the ESX host. Then from with in the Citrix terminal session, we would establish another terminal session to another server (that was actually a VM running on another ESX host) to setup the VC server.
They had pre build SAN luns to connect to for every student as well as VMFS partitions with ISO for the OS media used in the class to setup VMs.
The training you provide to your customers may or may not include the installation and setup of VI it's self and may only include management and VM creation only (which is all my training to clients provide, yet I do it on site with my customers VI setup, not my own). You could use your current setup if you wish, personally I would only use it in a view state only. Never allow the client to actually "do" anything in your own companies setup. I would suggest you setup a "training" platform to train your customers on. This will allow you to open the system up to them to poke and play with (cause it does help the learning curve to fix a system you just broke, just don't let them break a production system). You would need a minimum of two servers if you wanted to train the client on VMotion, DRA, and HA. You could put the VC server into a VM on the setup to save you the trouble of having a bare metal VC server. Be cause it is training, you don't really have to provide screaming machines, just something capable of running at least two VM's each.
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Brent Schmidt SPOOOOON!!!!!![[hippy]](/data/assets/smilies/hippy.gif "[hippy] [hippy]")
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple
We used Citrix to connect to their office in Palo Alto, CA. to establish a remote terminal session. From there, we used the HP (Compaq) ILO to take control of a server they had setup and set aside for training purpose to be used for the installation of ESX in the classroom. Once ESX was installed on our server, we would setup a VI client to continue with the ESX training, and use Putty to establish SSH session for command line training in the ESX host. Then from with in the Citrix terminal session, we would establish another terminal session to another server (that was actually a VM running on another ESX host) to setup the VC server.
They had pre build SAN luns to connect to for every student as well as VMFS partitions with ISO for the OS media used in the class to setup VMs.
The training you provide to your customers may or may not include the installation and setup of VI it's self and may only include management and VM creation only (which is all my training to clients provide, yet I do it on site with my customers VI setup, not my own). You could use your current setup if you wish, personally I would only use it in a view state only. Never allow the client to actually "do" anything in your own companies setup. I would suggest you setup a "training" platform to train your customers on. This will allow you to open the system up to them to poke and play with (cause it does help the learning curve to fix a system you just broke, just don't let them break a production system). You would need a minimum of two servers if you wanted to train the client on VMotion, DRA, and HA. You could put the VC server into a VM on the setup to save you the trouble of having a bare metal VC server. Be cause it is training, you don't really have to provide screaming machines, just something capable of running at least two VM's each.
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Brent Schmidt SPOOOOON!!!!!
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple
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