PowerEdge and vSphere. My home lab upgrade

So I just finished installing my new Dell EMC PowerEdge servers in my home lab. The difference one generation of server makes is astounding. The new machines are pretty stout and will serve well in the experiments and learning I want / need to do.

Home labs get budget racks

4x Dell EMC PowerEdge R620 (Sandy Bridge EP)
- 2x Intel Xeon E5-2670 2.6GhZ eight core CPU
- 128GB RAM each
- 1x Dell 400GB SAS SSD (vSAN Cache tier)
- 2x Dell 1.2TB SAS 10k (vSAN capacity tier)
- 2x Dell 600GB SAS 10k (local datastore)
- 2x Samsung 16GB SD-Card (boot)

Ubiquiti UniFi 16 port 1Gb switch (+ 2 1Gb SFP)
Ubiquiti UniFi 16 port 10Gb switch
Ubiquiti UniFi 8 port 1Gb switch
Spanning Tree enabled
Uplinked to my "home network" but isolated from
it except for management (all workloads isolated but internet accessible)

The nodes are connected as follows:
- iDRAC is on a dedicated VLAN (16 port UniFi)
- eth4 is on VLAN 1 (16 port UniFi)
- eth3 is on a dedicated routed VLAN (8 port UniFi)
- eth5 is on a 10Gb SFP+ DAC for VMTN (closed VLAN)
- eth6 is on a 10Gb SFP+ DAC for vSAN (closed VLAN)

Configuring these machines was SO simple.

1. Since I bought them used, I connected to the iDRAC first and downloaded the Enterprise license key. I then reset the iDRAC. This took a few minutes - but trust me - it's worth it to not have to slog through troubleshooting only to find out some obscure setting was in your way.
2. Once that was finished, I connected a local keyboard and monitor to each server and set the static IP address, admin user, and a few other options. This can be done remotely, but it's kind of a pain to discover the iDRAC and have to reconnect. The 5 minutes it took was worth the "in person" visit to my basement.
3. I then used Virtual Media to mount the Dell EMC Remote Update ISO. If you're not already aware of this gift - get aware. It's an ISO image (so could be burned to DVD and run locally if you wanted to) that I mounted to the virtual CD and booted the server from. Think of this as a run-time out of band Lifecycle Management tool for all of the devices in your compute node. It updates everything it finds to the versions on the ISO and restarts the system.
   
   You can find the ISO for your system here.
4. I proceeded then to mount the vSphere (Dell EMC custom build ISO) image and installed vSphere to the SD-Card. 

Once all of that was finished, I configured my DVS' and vmKernel NIC's and was ready to start playing. 

But wait... there's more...

Backstory: Every Dell EMC PowerEdge contains a Lifecycle Management utility in its' pre-boot environment. This LCM process allows you to connect to Dell from any internet accessible network and - just like the ISO in step #3 it will analyze everything in your system and offer to update it. Since the ISO I downloaded in step #3 was from July, there were most certainly updates issued by Dell EMC since then.

Anyone want to buy some R610's and a NetApp 10Gb switch?

So, I configured everything - including vSAN and stuff is running beautifully. I then put Server #1 into Maintenance mode (vSAN is configured for FTT1) and proceeded to reboot into the LCM. Sure enough, it found several firmware items that were newer than what was installed, so I let it do its' thing.

vSAN is magic. Period. It has come SO far in so short a period of time - I'm a HUGE fanboy. The LCM process on Server #1 took about 45 minutes. Tons of time before vSAN rebuild starts. Except I'm an idiot. I got distracted - forgot the server was updating - and what do you know... 90 minutes or so after the LCM started, I realized it was finished and rebooted ESX.

Before ESX completely booted, vSAN stopped rebuilding and re-synchronized the node with the other 3 members. 

I'm really enjoying my time with VMware. I'm hoping (now that I have enough CPU and RAM) to start messing around with PKS and, later, OpenShift. I'll continue to update...

Proudly displayed on the wall in my "lab" because why not?

/finis