To provide my lab requirements here is some components might need to buy. All devices listed below have been tested using VMware vSphere 6.0U3a without any issue. This might the cheapest way how to build your virtualization environment without buy enterprise branded server/storage/network.

The idea is to build virtualization environment consists of;

3 ESXi Hosts with 16GB RAM of each (swap taken care by SSD)

1 Shared storage (using iSCSI multipathing)

2 Network devices (Gigabit for both management & storage)

Casing: Cooler Master ELITE 110 x 3
Biostar H61MGV3 x 3
Intel Core i3 3220 3.3Ghz Cache 3MB x 3 — with
V-GeN DDR3 8GB PC12800 x 6
Sandisk SSD Plus 120GB x 3 –for cache/swap
Cooler Master ELITE POWER 350W // ENLIGHT 400W x 3

Synology DS 916+ x1
Seagate 2TB For NAS – IronWolf Series x2 (raid 1)


From software perspective; here is the list;

  1.  VMware vSphere 6.0U3a
  2.  vCenter 6.0 with HA enable
  3.  NSX (to reduce physical network complexity)
  4.  Site recovery manager (later on)

Additionally for the high level topology as seen below.

Recently i got additional two gigabit switches so, i separated the storage connection vs. data traffic as well as vMotion traffic for better performance.

So, the final topology has changed as depicted below.

Interested to build such kind of similar lab? just contact me for further discussion.