NAKIVO > Blog > VMware

How to Set Up VMware ESXi Lab – A Complete Guide

Updated: February 15, 2024

Written by: NAKIVO Team

VMware is one of the best virtualization platforms in the world, popular among IT specialists for its ability to provide high-speed operations, reliability, scalability, security, and convenience.

VMware ESXi Server is a type 1 hypervisor designed to be installed directly on physical servers, that is, it is a bare metal hypervisor. VMware type 2 hypervisors (VMware Player, Workstation, and Fusion), on the other hand, can be installed on existing operating systems running on desktops and laptops.

Many users may not have a free physical server or servers in the inventory to use for trying the ESXi and VMware vSphere enterprise-grade virtualization solution. Technically, ESXi can be installed on your physical computer. However, you may need to integrate a VIB package into the ESXi installation disk image if the ESXi installer cannot detect some devices (VIB packages contain device drivers for ESXi).

Let’s look at the requirements for setting up VMware ESXi on a computer and all the steps for a successful installation.

NAKIVO for VMware vSphere Backup

Complete data protection for VMware vSphere VMs and instant recovery options. Secure backup targets onsite, offsite and in the cloud. Anti-ransomware features.

DISCOVER SOLUTION

Hardware Configuration for a VMware Home Lab

We use VMware Workstation in this blog post to deploy ESXi hosts as virtual machines. Using VMware’s nested virtualization feature, you can create a VM running inside a VM. In this particular case, you can deploy a VM on an ESXi host running on a VM. For convenience working with the VMware home lab, you need a computer that meets a VMware home lab minimal hardware requirements:

A multicore x64 CPU with 1.3 GHz or faster core speed (produced in 2011 or later) that supports Intel VT-x or AMD-V virtualization hardware extensions
32 GB of RAM
A hard disk drive (HDD) with about 200 GB of free space. SSDs are preferred due to their higher read/write speed, especially for random read/write operations that are common for VM storage.
Ethernet network adapter
Linux or Windows x64 operating system (with GUI) installed on your physical machine

Examples of Hardware Configuration

Example 1: Desktop computer

CPU AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (100-100000910WOF) 4.2 GHz Socket AM5
Motherboard Gigabyte B650E Aorus Master AMD B650 4xDDR5 6600 MHz, up to 192 GB RAM
SSD Kingston KC600 2 TB Upgrade Bundle Kit (SKC600B/2048G) SATA
HDD 3.5″ WD Ultrastar DC HC320 8 TB (HUS728T8TALE6L4/0B36404) SATA
RAM Kingston FURY 16 GB DDR5 6400 MHz Renegade Silver RGB (KF564C32RSA-16) – 4 modules (64 GB RAM total)
Power Supply Be Quiet! Straight Power 11 Platinum 850W (BN308)
Video card AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT (100-300000071) GPU frequency: 2400 (Boost) MHz GDDR6 20 GB; Memory frequency: 20000 MHz; Bus: 320 bit PCI-Express 4.0 x16

Example 2: Desktop computer

CPU Intel Core i7-14700K (BX8071514700K) 3.4 GHz Socket 1700
Motherboard ASUS Prime Z690-A Intel Z690 4xDDR5 6000 MHz, up to 192 GB RAM
SSD Intel D3-S4620 1.92 TB (SSDSC2KG019TZ01) SATA
HDD 3.5″ WD Gold Enterprise Class 6 TB (WD6003FRYZ) SATA
RAM Kingston FURY 32 GB DDR5 6000 MHz Beast EXPO White (KF560C36BWE-32) – 4 modules (64 GB RAM total)
Power supply Chieftec 1000W Proton (BDF-1000C)
Video card GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4090 WINDFORCE 24G (GV-N4090WF3-24GD)

Example 3: Laptop Acer Predator Helios 16 Gaming Laptop – GeForce RTX™ 4080 – PH16-71-948L

Intel® Core™ i9-13900HX processor 2.20 GHz
Video Card NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4080 with 12 GB dedicated memory
16″ WQXGA (2560 x 1600) 16:10 IPS 240 Hz
32 GB, DDR5 SDRAM
1 TB SSD

Example 4: Laptop ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 (H7600, 12th Gen Intel)

Intel® Core™ i9-12900H
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 Ti
64GB RAM 4800 MHz DDR5 2 x SO-DIMM slots memory
Up to 4 TB two M.2 slots PCIe® SSD

NOTE: You don’t need the most powerful video card for a VMware lab setup. The most important components are CPU, memory, and storage. Unlike AMD processors, Intel processors technically allow you to run macOS virtual machines on VMware hypervisors.

Required Software

The following software is used for setting up a VMware home lab in this post:

VMware Workstation 17 used as a desktop hypervisor
VMware ESXi hypervisor 8.0 used as a VM (2 VMs total)
VMware vCenter Server 8.0 (1 VM, deployed as a virtual appliance)
FreeNAS 11.3 for creating an iSCSI shared storage (1 VM)
Lubuntu 22 Linux or any other supported OS for installing on a nested VM

To learn how to build a VMware home lab, you should understand how the lab is structured. Below you can see the main structure diagram of the VMware home lab to be deployed.

The principal diagram of the VMware home lab

Requirements justification

Total VMware home lab hardware and software requirements are based on the following minimum requirements:

VMware ESXi needs at least 4 GB of RAM to be installed (8 GB or more are recommended to run VMs); 2 CPU cores.
VMware vCenter Server 8.0 needs at least 14 GB of RAM; 2 CPU cores.
FreeNAS: 8 GB of RAM is recommended.
Your host operating system needs at least 4 GB of RAM to work properly.
VMware Workstation needs at least 2 GB of RAM (4 GB or more are recommended).

Licensing and price

You can set up a VMware lab at home for free for the duration of the trial periods. It is recommended to set up all lab components in a short time period (for example, within days) to make use of the full 60-day free trial periods for ESXi and vCenter. For example, if you install vCenter one month after installing ESXi, you’ll have only one month left for testing vSphere in your lab, given that 30 days have already elapsed for your ESXi free trial license.

VMware Workstation is available with a 30-day free trial for new users. When the trial period expires, VMware recommends that you buy a license. If you do not buy a license, you cannot start VMs. You can use the VMware Player to run your VMs for free after that, but the VMware Player includes fewer features – for example, the Virtual Network Editor is missing.
NOTE: VMware Workstation and VMware Player can be installed on a Linux operating system that is completely free. You don’t need to buy a Windows OS for your VMware lab setup for home. Of course, if you already have a computer running Windows, you can use it for VMware Workstation installation.
VMware vCenter Server for vSphere 8.0 can be used for a 60-day evaluation period free of charge with a full set of features, including APIs for data protection.
FreeNAS is a completely free software solution based on the FreeBSD operating system that allows you to configure a file server (similarly as for NAS) on any machine.

Installing VMware Workstation

Now that the hardware is prepared and the operating system is installed, you can download and install the VMware Workstation on your physical machine. To download VMware Workstation for Linux or Windows, refer to this page on VMware’s website.

Installing VMware Workstation on Linux

To install VMware Workstation on Linux, do the following:

Go to the directory where you saved the downloaded installer file. In this example, the VMware Workstation installer is located in the ~/Downloads directory:
cd /home/user1/Downloads/
Make the installer file executable:
sudo chmod +x ./VMware-Workstation-Full-17.0.0-20800274.x86_64.bundle
Run the VMware Workstation Linux installer:
sudo ./VMware-Workstation-Full-17.0.0-20800274.x86_64.bundle
The installation wizard window now appears. Answer the questions in the wizard and click Next to go to the next step.
- Accept the license agreement.
- Would you like to check for product updates on startup? Select Yes or No.
- Would you like to join the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program? Select Yes or No.
- Enter the user that will initially connect to the Workstation Server. Type the user name of the account you are using in Linux.
- Choose a directory for your shared virtual machines, for example, /var/lib/VMware/SharedVMs
- Enter the port to use for HTTPS access to Workstation Server (443 by default).
- Enter the license key. Keep this field empty for the free trial mode.
- The product is ready to be installed.
GNU C Compiler must be installed before running the VMware Workstation. To install this compiler, execute this command:
sudo apt-get -y install gcc make linux-headers-$(uname -r) dkms

The user interfaces of VMware Workstation for Linux and for Windows are identical. Below, you can see the screenshot of the interface of VMware Workstation 17 running on Linux.

The interface of VMware Workstation 17 for Linux

VMware Player is also installed by default when you install VMware Workstation.

Installing VMware Workstation on Windows

Go to the directory where you saved the downloaded installer and run the installer file. The name of the file is VMware-workstation-full-17.0.0-20800274.exe in this case. Similarly to the installation on Linux, a user-friendly wizard opens. After configuring options, click Next to go to proceed.

On the Welcome screen, click Next.
Accept the license agreement.
Select the installation destination.
Select the checkboxes if you want to check for updates on startup and join the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program.
Select the shortcuts you wish to place on your system.
Click Install to begin the installation.
The final installation screen allows you to enter a license (is not necessary for a free trial mode).

Now you have the installed instance of VMware Workstation on your physical computer.

Deploying a VM Running ESXi on VMware Workstation

For further experiments conducted in the VMware home lab used for writing this blog post, a computer with VMware Workstation 17 installed on Windows 10 should be used (there are C: and D: partitions on the disk). You can reproduce all explained actions on a Linux machine because VMware Workstation is a cross-platform virtualization solution (note that the paths would be different on a Linux machine). The next step is to install ESXi on a VM.

Creating a VM

Download the ESXi 8.0 installer in the ISO format from the VMware website.
You may need to create a VMware account for downloading the installation image (for free).
Create a directory to store virtual machines, for example, D:\VMware Home Lab\
Create a subdirectory D:\VMware Home Lab\ESXi8a for storing the files of the first ESXi VM.
Create a new virtual machine in VMware Workstation. Click File > New Virtual Machine. The New Virtual Machine Wizard appears.
- On the Welcome screen, select Custom (advanced).
- Specify the Virtual machine hardware compatibility. Select Workstation 17.x.
- Guest Operating System Installation. Select the Installer disk image file (iso) and browse the ESXi installer iso file. Click Next.
- Select a Guest Operating System. Select VMware ESX, then select VMware ESXi 7 in the drop-down menu and click Next.
- Name the Virtual Machine. Enter the VM name, for example, ESXi8a. Select the D:\VMware Home Lab\ESXi8a directory you have created before as the VM location.
- Processor Configuration. Specify the following parameters:
  - Number of processors: 2
  - Number of cores per processor: 1
  If you use 1 CPU with 1 core, the ESXi installer displays an error during installation.
- Memory for the Virtual Machine. Specify the amount of memory equal to 4096 MB. Later, you can edit the settings and increase the amount of memory.
- Network Type. Select Use network address translation (NAT).
- Select I/O Controller Types. Select Paravirtualized SCSI (Recommended).
- Select a Disk Type. Select SCSI (Recommended) as disk type.
- Select a Disk. Click Create a new virtual disk.
- Specify Disk Capacity. Set maximum disk size to 15 GB. ESXi doesn’t consume much disk space, and a 15-GB disk is enough for an ESXi installation. Select Store virtual disk as a single file.
- Specify Disk File. Place your virtual disk in the directory specified as the VM location. In this example, the D:\VMware Home Lab\ESXi8a\ESXi8a.vmdk is used.
- Ready to Create Virtual Machine. Check your VM settings and click Finish to create the VM.

Installing ESXi on the VM

After completing the configuration in the wizard, power on the new VM by clicking the “play” button in VMware Workstation. The VM boots from the ISO image, and you can see the ESXi installer interface.

On the Welcome screen, press Enter.
Read and accept the End User License Agreement (EULA). Press F11 to continue.
Select a disk to install or upgrade. Select the 15-GB virtual disk created earlier.
Select a keyboard layout. US Default is selected in this example.
Enter a root password. Confirm the root password.
On the Confirm Install screen, press F11 to start the installation.

NOTE: Read our blog post for a detailed interactive ESXi installation with screenshots.

Editing VM settings and configuring the network

Once ESXi is installed, shut down the VM running ESXi (click VM > Power > Shut Down Guest or press Ctrl+E in the interface of VMware Workstation) and prepare it for further network and storage configuration.

Let’s create the second virtual disk that we’ll use for the VM datastore (later nested VMs can be placed on that storage). You should also create a second virtual network adapter (NIC – network interface controller) that can be used for NIC teaming or for connecting to shared storage. Note that we recommend that you use a separate storage network for connecting shared storage to ESXi hosts.

Adding a virtual disk

To add a new virtual disk to a VM, click VM > Settings and in the Virtual Machine Settings window, click Add > Hard Disk.
Choose the virtual disk type: SCSI (Recommended).
Create a new virtual disk.
Set disk size equal to 40 GB and select the Store virtual disk as a single file option. If you don’t want to use thick provisioning, don’t select the Allocate all disk space now checkbox. You can set the maximum disk size to more than 40 GB if you have enough disk space on your physical computer.
Specify the virtual disk file location. D:\VMware Home Lab\ESXi8a\ESXi8a-0.vmdk is used in this example because storing all VM files in one directory is convenient.

Adding a network adapter

To add a second network adapter, click Add > Network Adapter. Let’s select different networks for connecting ESXi hosts to each other (NAT Network) and for connecting ESXi hosts to shared storage (host-only network).

The NAT network allows VMs to connect to each other and a host machine and for a host to connect to VMs. VMs can access an external network that can be accessed by a host.
The host-only network allows VMs to communicate with each other and with a host. A host can communicate with VMs. VMs don’t have access to external networks or the internet.

VMware Workstation provides a virtual network editor for configuring virtual networks, such as NAT and host-only networks. Moreover, you can create more NAT and host-only networks and assign network addresses, virtual gateways, and virtual DHCP servers to them.

The following connection scheme can be used in the VMware ESXi home lab created in this post:

The network scheme of the VMware home lab

Editing the virtual network configuration

Open the Virtual Network Editor by clicking Edit > Virtual Network Editor. Let’s define the following network configuration:
- VMnet8 (NAT network)
  - Network Address: 192.168.101.0/24
  - Gateway IP: 192.168.101.2
  - DHCP Settings: IP range is 192.168.101.201 – 192.168.101.254; Default lease time settings.
- VMnet1 (Host-only)
  - Network Address 192.168.105.0/24
  - DHCP Settings: IP range is 192.168.105.201 – 192.168.105.254
To edit the settings, select the VMnet8 network and hit the NAT Settings button.
Set the gateway IP address and advanced network settings. Click OK to save the changes.
Similarly, hit the DHCP settings button to edit the DHCP configuration.

Similarly, you can edit DHCP settings for VMnet1 and other networks.

NOTE: You can use other IP addresses in your VMware home labs. If you want to recreate the environment explained in this post, you can use the same configuration for more convenience.

Deploying a Second ESXi Host by Copying the VM

We have just created a VM, installed ESXi 8.0, and configured the VM and networks. Let’s create one more ESXi VM. You can create the second VM (ESXi8b) from scratch, the same way we created the first ESXi VM (ESXi8a), or you can clone the first VM.

To clone a VM, do the following:

Open your file manager, for example, Windows Explorer, and go to the directory where your first VM resides. In this example, this directory is D:\VMware Home Lab\. The directory of the first VM is D:\VMware home lab\ESXi8a\.
Create a directory named ESXi8b in D:\VMware Home Lab\.
Shut down your VM running ESXi (ESXi8a) and copy all files from the ESXi8a directory to the ESXi8b directory.
Now, you can see one of the advantages of hardware virtualization in action – you don’t need to deploy a new VM from scratch; instead, you can copy the existing VM to multiply your VMs.
To prevent confusion, you can rename the virtual disks and VM configuration file in the ESXi8b directory:
ESXi8a.vmdk -> ESXi8b.vmdk

ESXi8a-0.vmdk -> ESXi8b-0.vmdk

ESXi8a.vmx -> ESXi8b.vmx
Open the cloned VMX file (which was renamed from ESXi8a.vmx to ESXi8b.vmx). Find all ESXi8a values and replace them with ESXi8b in this VMX configuration file. Then, save the configuration file for the VM clone (cloned VM).
Open the cloned VM in VMware Workstation. Click File > Open and select the D:\VMware Home Lab\ESXi8b\ESXi8b.vmx file. Go to VM > Settings > Options and make sure that the VM is renamed to ESXi8b.
Power on your second ESXi VM (VM > Power > Power On).
VMware Workstation warns you that the virtual disk file is not found. Select Browse and your D:\VMware Home Lab\ESXi8b\ESXi8b.vmdk file. Click Open. A warning is displayed once more for the second virtual disk. Select the ESXi8b-0.vmdk file.
Next, VMware Workstation will warn you that this virtual machine might have been removed or copied. Click I Copied It, and your second VM should be loaded.
This warning is displayed because the copied VM has the same UUID (Universal Unique Identifier, which is a 128-bit integer) as the source VM. UUID is generated depending on the VM location and is used for generating the VM’s MAC (Media Access Control) address for a virtual network adapter. If you select I Moved It, then the UUID will be preserved. If you select I Copied It, a new UUID will be generated. Each machine must have a unique UUID, which is a machine’s digital fingerprint. An example of a UUID is 34 5e cb fa fd d4 a1 e1 72 3b 05 62 4d 3a 52 85.

Now, you have two VMs on which ESXi servers are installed.

Basic ESXi Configuration

Power on the first VM on which you have installed ESXi (ESXi8a) and press F2 to customize the system. As you can see in the screenshot, a virtual DHCP server for the VMnet8 virtual network is working properly, and the IP address is obtained automatically (192.168.101.202). However, we recommend that you set IP addresses for servers manually, and you can see how to do this below:

In the System Customization menu, select Configure Management Network and press Enter.
In the Configure Management Network menu, select the Network Adapters option.
You can see the second network adapter you have recently added to the VM. It is better to enable the second adapter later in the web interface. Press Esc to return to the Configure Management Network menu.
In the Configure Management Network menu, select IPv4 Configuration. In this menu, Set static IPv4 address and network configuration.
- IPv4 address: 192.168.101.101
- Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
- Default Gateway: 192.168.101.2
Press Enter to apply changes (you may need to reboot the host).

NOTE: You can configure the IP settings for the second network adapter later on when preparing to set up shared storage. Disable IPv6 if you are not going to use this network type.
Restart your ESXi VM after configuring the network settings to apply changes.

You can change the host name in System Customization > Configure Management Network > DNS Configuration. In the current example, ESXi01 is the name of the first virtual ESXi host for the ESXi home lab (the default host name is localhost).

Configuring access for remote management

Now go to the System Customization menu, enter Troubleshooting Options, then enable ESXi Shell and SSH. Enabling these options allows you to manage the ESXi host with a local console or remotely via SSH.

Open your web browser and enter https://192.168.101.101 in the address bar. Confirm the security exception, and you see the login page of VMware Host Client with which you can manage your ESXi host. Enter the login and password you have specified during ESXi installation.

The Login screen of VMware Host Client

Creating a new datastore

After your login, VMware asks whether you want to help improve the VMware Host Client. Tick the checkbox if you wish and click OK.

Let’s create a new datastore that will use the second 40-GB virtual disk. This type of datastore is referred to as directly attached storage (DAS).To create a new datastore, select Storage in the Navigator (which is located in the left pane of the window), and then click the New Datastore button.

Creating a new directly attached datastore on an ESXi host

The New datastore wizard opens:

Select creation type. Select how you would like to create a datastore. Click Create new VMFS datastore.
Select device. Select the device on which you want to create a new VMFS partition. A 40-GB virtual disk is selected for this purpose. Enter the name of the datastore, for example, datastore40.
Select partitioning options – Use full disk and VMFS6.
Ready to complete. Check the datastore configuration summary and select the Finish button to complete the datastore creation.

The datastore has now been created.

Configuring a network used for shared storage

As you recall, a second NIC (network interface controller) was created for the ESXi VM but was not configured. Let’s configure the second network interface that will be used by the ESXi host for connecting to the shared network attached storage.

To establish this connectivity, you have to create a new virtual switch and a new VMkernel NIC. A VMkernel NIC is used for connecting ESXi to a specified network by using the vSwitch to which this VMkernel NIC is connected.

Open VMware Host Client and go to Networking > Virtual switches, then choose Add standard virtual switch. Note that there is a vSwitch0 that is automatically created when ESXi is installed.
The Add standard virtual switch window appears. Enter the vSwitch name, for example, vSwitch1. Select vmnic1 in the drop-down menu as Uplink 1. Edit other settings if needed, and then click the Add button to add a new virtual switch.
After creating a new vSwitch, go to Networking > VMkernel NICs > Add VMkernel NIC to create a new VMkernel network adapter.
Define the following parameters in the Add VMkernel NIC window:
- Port group: New port group
- New port group: Storage
- Virtual switch: vSwitch1
- IPv4 Configuration: Static
- Address: 192.168.105.101
- Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Select the checkboxes near the services you want to allow for this VMkernel NIC. You can set MTU (maximum transmission unit) to 9000 bytes for using Jumbo frames in a storage network.
Click the Create button.

Now you can ping the IP address of VMkernel (192.168.105.101) from your host on which VMware Workstation is installed. The first ESXi host is configured. Power on your second VM on which the ESXi server is installed (this VM has been cloned recently) and configure your second ESXi host similarly as you configured your first ESXi host, apart from the host name and IP addresses.

The following network parameters are used for the second ESXi in this example:

Network adapter 1 (NAT network): IP address 192.168.101.102, mask 255.255.255.0, gateway 192.168.101.2
Network adapter 2 (host-only network): IP address 192.168.105.102, mask 255.255.255.0
Hostname: ESXi02

Deploying vCenter Server

After configuring two VMs as ESXi hosts, you are ready to deploy VMware vCenter Server to manage the ESXi home lab centrally. Download vCenter Server from the VMware website. The name of the downloaded file is VMware-VCSA-all-8.0.1-22088981.iso in this example.

Open this ISO file or mount it to a virtual CD/DVD drive and copy the VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-8.0.1.00300-22088981_OVF10.ova from the vcsa directory of the ISO image to a custom directory on your physical machine (vCenter Server appliance is a partially configured distribution built on a Linux basis that is called a Photon OS).

Deploying the OVA template

In the graphical user interface of VMware Workstation, click File > Open and select the extracted VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-8.0.1.00300-22088981_OVF10.ova file.
NOTE: In the real deployment scenario (not in a virtualized lab), vCenter Server Appliance is deployed as a VM on an ESXi host. The installation principle is similar.
A pop-up window with EULA (End User License Agreement) is displayed (the OVA import wizard opens). Tick the I accept the terms of the license agreement checkbox.
Create the D:\VMware Home Lab\vCenter8 directory on the computer running VMware Workstation and define this directory as a storage path for the new virtual machine. Enter the name of the new VM, such as vCenter8.
Provide a name and logical storage path for the new virtual machine. The given VM name is vCenter8, and the VM location is the same as the location for previously created VMs – D:\VMware Home Lab\vCenter8\.
Select deployment options. Select the Tiny vCenter Server with Embedded PSC option, which is sufficient for a small ESXi home lab.
Set the additional properties for this virtual machine. This screen contains multiple menu entries that must be configured. After configuring one menu entry, click another string to configure the remaining parameters. Hover your mouse over the i icon to see the tooltips.
- Networking Configuration.
  - Host Network IP address Family: IPv4
  - Host Network Mode: static
  - Host network IP address: 192.168.101.103
  - Host Network Prefix: 24. In the binary format the /24 mask is 11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000 (24 ones) that is the same as 255.255.255.0 in a decimal format.
  - Host Network Default Gateway: 192.168.101.2
  - Host Network DNS Servers: 192.168.101.2
  - Host Network Identity: vcenter8.localdomain (enter the FQDN – a fully qualified domain name).
- SSO Configuration. Enter and confirm the password that will be used for Single Sign On.
- System Configuration. Enter the root password and confirm this password. This password will be used for console login.
- Upgrade Configuration. You should configure the parameters of this sub-menu if you wish to upgrade the existing VMware vCenter Server. Skip configuring this category of parameters if you are deploying a fresh vCenter instance.
- Miscellaneous. You can skip configuring this category of parameters.
- Networking Properties. Enter the domain name (the same as used by the ESXi host you have deployed). In this example, the default localdomain name is used.
Press Import to start deploying the vCenter VM from the OVA template. After deployment is complete, the VM is started automatically. The blue-gray management interface is similar to the yellow-gray ESXi management interface (see the screenshot below).
The static IP configuration has already been done by you with the OVA deployment wizard. You can check the IP configuration in vCenter DCUI to make sure that network settings are configured correctly inside the VM.

By default, the virtual network adapter of your VM running vCenter may be connected to a network that is distinct from your NAT network (for example, your vCenter VM may be connected to a VMnet0 Bridged network that is not used by any of your VMs). Check the network settings.

In the interface of VMware Workstation, click VM > Settings. In the Hardware tab, choose your network adapter and NAT (as you had configured for the first and the second VMs running ESXi). After doing this, open the console on your physical machine and ping your vCenter Server IP address (ping 192.168.101.103) to make sure that the network works properly for your VM running vCenter.

vCenter Server must be connected to the NAT virtual network in the explained VMware home lab

Finishing deploying vCenter

Now that you have deployed your vCenter Server, you should do the rest of VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) configuration for your ESXi home lab. Make sure that your VMs running vCenter and ESXi hosts are powered on and working properly. Enter the IP address of your vCenter Server in the address bar of the browser (https://192.168.101.103:5480 in this case) to continue configuring vCenter.

On the Getting Started screen, press the Setup icon to configure this appliance as a new vCenter Server. The Stage 2 installation wizard opens:

VMware vCenter 8 setup in the web interface – stage 1

Introduction. Click Next at each step to continue.
Appliance configuration. Set the network configuration (see the screenshot below). You can see the network configuration you have set while deploying the OVA template. Edit the settings if necessary.
- Network configuration: Assign static IP address
- IP version: IPv4
- System name: vcenter8.localdomain
- IP address: 192.168.101.103
- Subnet mask or prefix length: 255.255.255.0
- Default gateway: 192.168.101.2
- DNS servers: 192.168.101.2
- Time synchronization mode: Synchronize time with the ESXi host
- SSH access: Activated
If there is an endless loop, and the installation is stuck, try entering the IP address instead of FQDN in the system name line. However, it is better to make resolving hostnames work.
SSO configuration. Click Create a new SSO domain. You can use the default vsphere.local domain name. Set the Single Sign On password for administrator and confirm the password.
Configure CEIP. Optionally select the checkbox to join the VMware Customer Experience Program.
Ready to complete. Review your settings and hit Finish to finalize deploying vCenter. Look at the progress bar and wait until the installation process finishes.

NOTE: During vCenter installation, errors may occur. Discover some of the most common errors you may encounter and how to resolve them.

Password expiration

Set the root password expiration date for vCenter Server Management. We set the password not to expire. This is because if you forget to change the password or edit this setting before the password expires, you may have issues when you log in to vCenter Server Management web interface and change the expired password.

To set the expiration date:

Open the vCenter Server Management web interface. We open 192.168.101.103:5480 in a web browser.
Go to Administration, and in the Password expiration settings section, click Edit.
Click No in the Password expiration settings and click Save.

Centralized vSphere management with vCenter

Now, you can log in to vCenter with VMware vSphere Client. Enter the IP address of your vCenter Server into the address bar of your web browser (https://192.168.101.103 in this case). The introduction web page loads, and you should click this option: Launch vSphere Client (HTML5)

Let’s use the HTML5 vSphere Client. On the VMware Single Sign-On page, enter the user name (administrator@vsphere.local) and the password you have previously specified.

Create a new datacenter

Once logged in to VMware vSphere Client, you will see nothing in the vCenter inventory. First, you should add a new datacenter that is the logical container (directory) where your hosts and clusters are placed. In order to add a new datacenter, click Actions > New Datacenter. Enter the datacenter name, for example, Datacenter1.

Creating a new datacenter in vCenter with VMware vSphere Client

Adding ESXi hosts to the inventory

Add your first ESXi host to the datacenter. Right-click your datacenter name and then click Add Host in the context menu. Your VM running ESXi must be powered on.

A context menu used to add host to the datacenter of vCenter

The Add Host wizard opens.

Name and location. Enter the IP address of the ESXi host you want to add. In our example, the IP address of the added host is 192.168.101.101.
Connection settings. Select the user name and password you have specified during ESXi installation (the root user is used here). Hit Yes if a certificate security alert is displayed.
Host summary. Review the summary of the host.
Host lifecycle. There are changes in the update approach for ESXi hosts in vSphere 8.0. VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager images should be used instead of vSphere Lifecycle Manager baselines. VMware vSphere Update Manager is deprecated and can be removed in future vSphere versions. If you want to use the old traditional approach, leave the checkbox deselected.
Assign the license. In the ESXi home lab in this post, the evaluation 60-day license is used for all VMware vSphere products. Hence, you don’t need to change anything on this screen.
Lockdown Mode. Select the Disabled option to be able to manage the ESXi host without vCenter Server.
VM location. Select the datacenter where your VMs will be stored after creation. As there is only one datacenter at this moment, you should not change anything on this screen.
Ready to complete. Check the configuration summary and click Finish to add the host.

Wait for a few seconds until your ESXi host is connected to vCenter Server. ESXi01 is now added to the vCenter Server inventory. Repeat these steps and add the second ESXi host (ESXi02) to your vCenter.

A datacenter is created and ESXi hosts are added to vCenter

Let’s create a new virtual machine on the virtual ESXi host for the VMware home lab. This VM will be a nested VM.

NOTE: There are three methods for creating a new VM:

in vCenter by using VMware vSphere Client
using VMware Host client (creating a new VM by using standalone ESXi host managing tools)
by connecting to vCenter or ESXi host in the interface of VMware Workstation

Deploying a Nested VM on a Virtual ESXi Host

Insert the ISO installation image of the operating system you want to install on your virtual ESXi host into the virtual CD/DVD drive of the VM running ESXi. In this example, the Lubuntu 22.04 64-bit installer can be used because this Ubuntu-based Linux distribution is lightweight (this is important when your VMware home lab hardware resources are limited).

To insert the installation ISO image into a virtual optical drive:

Select your VM running ESXi (ESXi8a in this case), and click VM > Settings in the VMware Workstation interface.
In the Virtual Machine Settings window, select CD/DVD, select the Use ISO image file option, and select the ISO bootable installation image (click Browse to navigate your file system for selecting the ISO file).

When the ISO installation media is inserted into the optical drive of your virtual ESXi host, open VMware vSphere Client and select your ESXi host in the vCenter inventory. Right-click the ESXi host, and in the Actions menu, select New Virtual Machine.

Creating a new virtual machine with VMware vSphere Client

The New Virtual Machine wizard opens:

Select a creation type. Choose Create a new virtual machine.
Select a name and folder. Enter your virtual machine name, for example, Lubuntu, select your datacenter (the Datacenter1 is the only datacenter available at this moment in this example).
Select a compute resource. Select your first ESXi host (ESXi01 that has the IP address 192.168.101.101 is selected in this example).
Select storage. Select the datastore you have created when configuring the ESXi host. In our example, datastore40 is selected.
Select compatibility. If you have ESXi hosts of versions older than 8.0 (7.0, 6.7, 6.5, etc.), you should select compatibility with the oldest version of ESXi that is present in your virtual environment. Let’s select ESXi 7.0 and later compatibility for this example.
Select a guest OS. As Lubuntu 22 64-bit is used as a guest OS for the VM that is deployed, the Guest OS family must be Linux, and the Guest OS version must be Ubuntu Linux (64-bit).
Customize hardware. This step includes several settings. Edit the settings as follows:
- CPU: 1
- Memory: 2 GB
- New Hard Disk: 25 GB, Thin Provision (click your new hard disk to expand the list of settings).
- New CD/DVD Drive: Host Device, Connect at power on.
Ready to complete. Verify your new VM configuration and click Finish.

Your VM has now been created. To install a guest OS, select the VM and start the VM (Actions > Power > Power On). Select Launch Web Console to see the image displayed by the “virtual monitor” connected to the VM. Install Lubuntu Linux on the VM as usual. After installing Linux, install VMware Tools on your guest OS. Open Terminal and verify that your Linux has internet access with the following commands.

ifconfig

ping vmware.com

Checking the network settings on Linux running on the nested VMware VM

We can see that the virtual network adapter that obtained the IP address via DHCP and the internet connection work properly for this nested VM running in the VMware ESXi lab. Install VMware Tools from online repositories by using the following commands.

For Linux with a command line interface only, use the command:

apt-get install open-vm-tools

To install VMware Tools on Linux with the GUI, use the command:

apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop

The command must be executed with root privileges. Answer the questions provided by the console wizard of the VMware Tools installer to complete the installation. Sometimes, you may need to reboot the VM after installing VMware Tools. Refresh the web page of the VMware vSphere client in your browser, and you should see the VMware Tools version and running status.

NOTE: In addition to the Web Console, you can connect to the VM with VMware Workstation. The advantage of using VMware Workstation is that you can set a higher resolution to be displayed by a VM running on an ESXi host remotely (the maximum resolution displayed in the Web Console of VMware vSphere Client is 1152 X 864). To connect to a remote VM running on an ESXi host, you should connect to the ESXi server or vCenter that manages that particular ESXi server by clicking File > Connect to server in the interface of VMware Workstation.

Now, most of the components of VMware home lab have been configured:

Virtual networks
ESXi01
ESXi02
vCenter
A guest Linux VM (a nested VM) running on ESXi01

NOTE: You can check this blog post to learn how to migrate a VM from one ESXi host to another by using vCenter Server.

Connecting Shared iSCSI Storage to an ESXi Host

Connecting shared iSCSI storage is the final stage of the VMware lab setup for home. iSCSI protocol provides block-level access to the shared storage by carrying SCSI instructions over a TCP/IP network. An ESXi host can access data at the block level similarly to the way it accesses directly attached storage. The iSCSI protocol is widely used because it’s affordable (many NAS devices support iSCSI) and easy to set up when compared with Fibre Channel SAN systems. You can attach the iSCSI datastore to an ESXi host when directly attached storage is full or when you need to deploy a cluster.

Installing TrueNAS

At this stage, you need to install TrueNAS on a VM and use it to create an iSCSI target which you should connect as a shared datastore to the ESXi host. Check this blog to learn how to install and set up TrueNAS when building a VMware Home Lab.

Adding a new iSCSI datastore to an ESXi host

Open VMware Host Client and log in to one of your ESXi hosts running on VMs (for example, ESXi02 – https://192.168.101.102). Enter the IP address of your ESXi host in the address bar of your web browser for doing this.
In the Navigator pane, go to Storage, then click the Adapters tab in the main part of the window. You should see the existing storage adapters (disk controllers).
First, you need to add a software iSCSI adapter.
Click Software iSCSI in the Adapters tab. In the configure iSCSI window, set the following parameters as in the example below:
iSCSI enabled: Enabled

Static targets. Target: iqn.2005-10.org.freenas.ctl (the name you memorized after configuring the iSCSI Target in FreeNAS). Address: 192.168.105.105 (the IP address of your FreeNAS machine). Port 3260 (a default TCP port number used for iSCSI connection).

Dynamic targets. Address 192.168.105.105. Port 3260.

Click Save configuration for creating a new iSCSI adapter.

NOTE: As you recall, in the section about configuring ESXi hosts (at the beginning of this post), the host-only network 192.168.105.0/24 was configured for each ESXi for connecting to shared storage.
In the Adapters tab, click Rescan and Refresh. After that, you will see the new iSCSI software adapter that you have created.

Now let’s add a shared iSCSI datastore to the ESXi host. Open the Datastores tab and click New datastore (similarly as you have done when adding a local 40-GB datastore to your ESXi hosts). The wizard window appears.

Select creation type. Click Create a new VMFS datastore.
Select device. Select a device on which to create a new VMFS partition. Enter a name, for example, datastore-iscsi. Select your FreeNAS iSCSI Disk from the list of unclaimed devices. Then click Next.
Select partitioning options. Select the Use full disk option and the VMFS6 file system. Click Next.
Ready to complete. Check the datastore settings and select Finish to create the datastore.

Now, the second ESXi host is configured to use a shared iSCSI datastore. This datastore is displayed in the Datastores tab of the Storage section in the interface of VMware Host Client (see the screenshot below). You can use this datastore like you use your directly attached datastore. Make sure that your NAS device on which the iSCSI target is configured (a VM running FreeNAS in this case) is running before powering on ESXi hosts.

The remote iSCSI datastore has been created successfully on the ESXi host

Repeat these steps and add the shared datastore created on FreeNAS to your other ESXi host. After that, your vSphere configuration will almost be ready to deploy a cluster.

Other Experiments You Can Conduct in Your VMware Home Lab

At this point, you have a fully workable VMware home lab with two ESX hosts (one of which runs a nested Linux VM), vCenter Server, and FreeNAS (used as an iSCSI target).

We didn’t cover all the features and possibilities above, as you can perform many more operations that may be used in a production environment, for example:

Migrate your nested VM (Lubuntu22 in this case) from the directly attached storage to the shared storage (datastore40-2 > datastore-iscsi) with Storage vMotion and migrate VMs between hosts with vMotion.
Deploy a High Availability (HA) and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) cluster.
Install VMware PowerCLI to get all the advantages of scripting and automation provided by VMware.
Configure VMware vSAN.
Create VM templates; deploy VMs from templates.

Before deploying VMware vSphere in a production environment, you should also pay special attention to data protection for your VMs. You can deploy NAKIVO Backup & Replication on a VM running in your ESXi home lab and test how the product performs backup, replication and recovery for VMware VMs running on your ESXi hosts. NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a data protection solution designed to leverage native VMware technologies for faster and more efficient backup. The solution offers several recovery options: instant full VM boot from backup, cross-platform VM recovery, instant app object recovery, etc.

NAKIVO for VMware vSphere Backup

Complete data protection for VMware vSphere VMs and instant recovery options. Secure backup targets onsite, offsite and in the cloud. Anti-ransomware features.

DISCOVER SOLUTION