DXi V5000 Community Edition: Initial Configuration

Hi, we’ve completed the deployment. Now let’s configure the appliance so we can connect it to our vSphere environment and Veeam backup system.

First, open the Quantum appliance’s web interface using its IP address and sign in with the admin credentials you configured earlier.

Next, in the left-hand menu, go to Wizards.

Let’s configure our CIFS and NFS repositories. Choose the NAS option.

Follow the steps. In my case, I’m creating a CIFS directory in a workgroup.

Now let’s create a user so we can manage permissions for the CIFS repository we created and secure it.

Go to the USERS wizard.

After creating the user, edit the repository permissions and test them.

To do this, exit Wizards using EXIT at the bottom left. In the main menu, go to CONFIGURATION –> NAS and edit the repo_dxi repositories.

These are the default permissions, which allow all users to access the CIFS repository.
Clear the Allow all users to access this share checkbox and add our user:

Here’s the resulting configuration. Click Apply, and you’re done!

The repository list now shows that access is limited to allowed users.

Now let’s test access to the CIFS repository in Windows Explorer. It asks for credentials!

Enter the credentials for the user we created earlier, and it’s ready to use.

Everything is now configured for initial use.
Later, we’ll look at other settings in more detail, such as host-based access permissions for NFS repositories. By default, everyone can connect.
We’ll also look at email alerts and more.

Our storage is ready to support either a VMware cluster or a Veeam B&R backup repository.

Regards.

Homelab Hardware

Hi!

My homelab is essential to my day-to-day work, learning, testing, and more.

Electricity is expensive these days, so I’ll show you what my homelab looks like and roughly how much it costs each month. It runs all the time.

My homelab is based on an HP ProLiant DL360p Gen8

equipped with:
2 Xeon E5-2690 CPUs
128 GB RAM
2 x 64 GB SSDs for the ESXi OS (RAID 1)
1 x 2 TB SSD for the primary datastore
1 x 240 GB SSD for the secondary datastore
2 x 450 W power supplies

I bought the server on eBay from an online store called Bargain Hardware. They’re very friendly and provide great service.

Numbers:
At the moment, with the server always on and running at 30% load, I pay an average of €10–12 per month for electricity.
For me, having it available all the time and being able to access it remotely is worth it.
For roughly €120 a year, I haven’t found another setup with this performance that can run my nested lab on different hardware.

Of course, you could adjust the power supplies, processors, RAM, and other components.
This configuration works well for me, and I’m happy with it.

Here are a couple of screenshots:

Homelab Software

I use the term “software lab” for a lab built with a virtualization program such as VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, or, in my case, VMware Fusion on a Mac.

This is a useful approach because it lets us run many tests and often make use of the computer we already have.

We can deploy an ESXi server relatively easily and run tests.

In my case, I have a 15-inch 2018 MacBook Pro.

32 GB RAM

6-core i7

1 TB SSD 

So I’ve been able to try many things and run the following in my lab: 

2 x ESXi (16 GB RAM each)

1 x Windows Server 2016 DC + DNS (4 GB RAM)

1 x TrueNAS for shared NFS (2 GB RAM)

That’s 38 GB of RAM in total—don’t panic.

Keep in mind we don’t use all of the assigned RAM. That’s the advantage of virtualization:

Assigned RAM is not consumed unless it is actually used, so everything is fine as long as the VMs don’t use more RAM than the physical hardware has available.

After deploying vCenter on one of the hosts, available RAM becomes quite limited. For testing, I’ll deploy one or two VMs with Photon OS, a lightweight OS designed for vSphere environments.

https://github.com/vmware/photon/wiki/Downloading-Photon-OS

The network configuration is basic because this is a small test environment. In general, everything is on the same NAT network, with a few exceptions for specific tests.

If you don’t want to or can’t use this kind of hardware, you can install ESXi on a PC or laptop with 16 GB of RAM and run vCenter and one VM on it. The real benefit, though, is being able to simulate a cluster and explore more possibilities.