October 14, 2016 at 9:20 am
My home lab has been invaluable over the years, for all sorts of reasons. One of my favorite reasons is to "proof of concept" a task I may need to do at work.
The box is a bit long in the tooth, I built it years ago part by part as a hobby and learning experience. Though with an i7, 24 GB memory and Samsung SSD, it still gets the job done. I use Virtual Box and with 24 GB memory, I can run about up to 4 VMs at a time depending on how much memory I give them so I can run a DC and an AG cluster, which has been great.
I need to figure out some faster storage, the SSD seems to get hung up. I've been meaning to look at a PCIe card.
October 14, 2016 at 9:24 am
has anyone built a VM for browsing the internet they would like to share?
412-977-3526 call/text
October 14, 2016 at 9:44 am
You know the comments about family and friends hits home. For my first 30 years of work I refused to work more than 40 hours most of the time. All my employers were cool with it and I very rarely brought work home. Now I realize I want to be "more" (in a different way) and it's not that I'm learning new things for my employer but for myself. The lab is going to help. Right now I'm interested in Big Data/Data Science. I'm retaking math (and having a blast) and learning about Python/R/SQL Server 2016 and Windows Server 2016. My advantage is my child is out of the home and my wife is supportive.
October 14, 2016 at 9:47 am
October 14, 2016 at 10:05 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (10/14/2016)
For the AWS/Azure people with labs, anyone want to write an article that would allow someone to duplicate your lab?
I'll give it a go as I've got to download SQL2016 and get it installed.
I've had some success with Vagrant for Linux builds but have yet to try it for Windows.
I know that Windows10 gets very sniffy with Virtual Box and Vagrant if you have the Hypervisor services running. It's either disable the Hypervisor services or switch to using Docker, which is probably not a bad idea anyway.
October 14, 2016 at 10:18 am
One of the recurring themes in the responses so far, seems to be "I'm at home, I'm spending the time with my family, not doing things that benefit my employer."
Here's the thing. While that's an admirable idea, I think most of us here have the drive, to some degree or another, to learn new things about that which we earn our living to be able to spend time with family. Maybe your employer provides you with the resources (time, software, equipment) to do that learning on the company nickel. Maybe your employer simply can't afford to provide you with the tools you need. Maybe many possibilities that either permit or don't, you being able to learn on the clock.
But it doesn't matter. Think of whatever time you take, whether at home on your time or at work, as investing in YOU, not your employer. If you learn how to set up a flawless AG on the companies time, will that knowledge suddenly disappear if / when you change employers? No, neither will it disappear if you learn on your own time at home. So that time you take at home to learn new things about what you do is an investment in the future, both yours and your family. You might parley that knowledge into a raise at work, giving you more funds to do bigger things with the family (Come on kids! We're going backpacking up the Appalachian Trail this summer for a couple weeks!) or into better perks (Joe, you've streamlined things so much, we're doubling your vacation time from here on out) or into a job that you enjoy more (Honey, you've been so much happier since you quit Initech and went to work for Initrode!)
Sure, you'll probably find yourself chewing on a work-related problem, but you'll still be acquiring knowledge and skills that will work anywhere that you may go.
Everyone thinks there's two things they need to balance, home life and work life, but really I think it's three things: home life, work life, and self life (the time you spend to improve yourself)
How you divide those up is a personal choice (or to use a SQL phrase, "It depends") but if you neglect any one of the three too much, the others will suffer as well.
October 14, 2016 at 10:39 am
My home lab is in the process of being built, i.e. haul two Dells PCs from my car in to the house and hook 'em up. I need to get another USB WiFi adapter as my computer area is far from my router, I'll also block their MAC addresses at the router to prevent Windows 10 from phoning home (after I update them). They don't need internet connectivity and won't have anything more than SQL Server, developer tools, and Access. Both PCs will run without keyboard and monitor as I'll remote to them from my 27" iMac. I could run multiple VMs on my Mac and have in the past, but since upgrading to macOS Sierra I need to upgrade my Parallels or buy VMWare. It's upgradeable from its current 16 gig of RAM to 32 and it has 1.5 TB available of its 4 TB drive right now, but as my job ended I'm not going to spend money that I don't need. (I got the Dells from the supplier of the school that I was at: they had a two for one sale and I got the pair for a very nice price. They're a bit older, but more than adequate for what I need.)
One of the PCs has Win 10 installed, the other is still at 7. The 10 install has SQL 2014, SSMS 2016, and a link to Azure facilities. There's a lot of things that I need to study and establish some skill in as there are so many SQL Server technologies that my employers have never used. I'm also working on an edX course to improve my Linux skills, but I can run that in a VirtualBox in my desktop or laptop, it doesn't need a dedicated PC.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
October 14, 2016 at 11:17 am
October 14, 2016 at 11:27 am
Henry_Lee (10/14/2016)
My home lab has been invaluable over the years, for all sorts of reasons. One of my favorite reasons is to "proof of concept" a task I may need to do at work.The box is a bit long in the tooth, I built it years ago part by part as a hobby and learning experience. Though with an i7, 24 GB memory and Samsung SSD, it still gets the job done. I use Virtual Box and with 24 GB memory, I can run about up to 4 VMs at a time depending on how much memory I give them so I can run a DC and an AG cluster, which has been great.
I need to figure out some faster storage, the SSD seems to get hung up. I've been meaning to look at a PCIe card.
if your SSD is getting hung up, depending on the cost, it might be charper to RAID 0 a couple of cheap SATA3 SSDS than use a PCIE SSD. SATA SSDs (at least consumer grade) have gotten really cheap lately, while PCIE ones still seem to be staying expensive.
October 14, 2016 at 11:52 am
I'd never RAID 0 stuff. Too much effort to rebuild, unless you are backing up somehow.
That's me, however. I have been meaning to get a "quick rebuild" system going so that if I lose a drive, I can recover easily.
October 14, 2016 at 12:35 pm
When I'm experimenting on some project at home, it's usually something vertical like loading my bank statement transactions into SSAS or programming a home automation controller. I'm not trying to spin up an entire IT environment, much less a physical hardware environment.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
October 14, 2016 at 12:52 pm
We absolutely must continue to see what we can get out of all the clouds these days... there's a lot of free or dirt cheap services available...
in fact, in the course of my work, I have the MSFT Azure cloud leverage my local compute for a specific step in an overal DevOps build pipeline... this saves me from a subscription fee elsewhere... indeed a small example of cloud<->on-prem blending
some things just lend themselves to less "friction" if they're local... i'm a developer and, to me, removing all latency in my "REPL" style development is tantamount... therefore i need some local compute... and specifically for iOS dev i need both my primary Windows as well as a Mac to build the executable... we could just solve this with separate physical machines and of course this consideration goes both ways but in the right circumstances a singular box with some headroom dolled out effectively for what you need in the moment scratches the itch nicely... particularly in the home context, minimalist aspect of less physical boxes lying around can be a factor.
So anyway, if your needs drive a home lab, after personally suffering alternatives for years, I highly encourage you to keep VMware ESXi in mind...
First off, it's free.
The base install is only a few minutes and very easy.
You can then go ahead and attach your existing physical Windows installation drive directly and boot it up as a VM... and still go back to booting it physically if you ever want... i've found the day-to-day performance of my ESXi backed Windows VM right on par with physical.
I look at ESXi as favorable over MSFT Hyper-v because ESXi is a very very thin linux installation vs Hyper-V requires a full Windows Server installation... e.g. ESXi readily runs in less than 2GB ram and, (hopefully) because it's such a small surface area, doesn't require the regularly recurring updates like a full OS does... this actually winds up mattering in day-to-day convenience: Windows updates tend to drive a reboot... I spent several years running a Windows host with other guest VMs and let alone the annoying performance impacts on both guest and host, the reboot of the host running multiple guests is a fairly annoying event... under ESXi, i really love no longer having to think about killing where i'm at on my guests and waiting to get back to work when Windows is getting updates.
To really put a bow on the DIY home arrangement - typically a "headless" host like ESXi means you no longer get to "sit" on that host box as a workstation with local keyboard, mouse and screens; we usually have to sit on another laptop or something to log in to our guest instance desktops remotely... which, going back to point about equipment proliferation, can be a deterrent ...
HOWEVER, by leveraging physical pass-through (aka VT-d aka IOMMU aka DirectPath I/O) we can enable all our "workstation" devices local to the host - keyboard, mouse and monitors, usb devices like webcam, etc... so I sit right on my singular primary Windows box just like before but with a lot more flexibility to spin up guests on a whim... it winds up being a pretty sweet "cake and eat it" situation.
Shameless plug for my deep dive post on this topic 🙂
also I particularly want to call out TinkerTry as a guy that looks to have lovingly gathered all the compatible, economical, _certified_ ESXi hardware bits and instructions to make this a buy and go affair... i went my own hardware route so i have no investment in what he's hawking ... i simply found his attention to detail appealing.
October 14, 2016 at 1:20 pm
[/quote]
if your SSD is getting hung up, depending on the cost, it might be charper to RAID 0 a couple of cheap SATA3 SSDS than use a PCIE SSD. SATA SSDs (at least consumer grade) have gotten really cheap lately, while PCIE ones still seem to be staying expensive.[/quote]
Thanks for the suggestion. One of the reasons I'd like to look at the PCIe cards is just to learn and play with something new and different. And I was kind of wondering if the SATA3 interface was part of my current problem, though I'd have to research further to back that up.
October 14, 2016 at 1:26 pm
Windows Server 2016 had a much 'potentially' smaller footprint and is probably getting close to VMware for thinness (at least that's the M$ marketing line).
October 14, 2016 at 1:51 pm
Henry_Lee (10/14/2016)
if your SSD is getting hung up, depending on the cost, it might be charper to RAID 0 a couple of cheap SATA3 SSDS than use a PCIE SSD. SATA SSDs (at least consumer grade) have gotten really cheap lately, while PCIE ones still seem to be staying expensive.[/quote]
Thanks for the suggestion. One of the reasons I'd like to look at the PCIe cards is just to learn and play with something new and different. And I was kind of wondering if the SATA3 interface was part of my current problem, though I'd have to research further to back that up.[/quote]
Understandable. I too like to get my hands on shiny new toys.
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