The Lab

As this blog will revolve around solutions developed in my home lab, I thought it would be best to provide some details about how it is configured and how it will be used to demonstrate different scenarios throughout my current and future blog posts.

Network:

• Brocade ICX6610 48P - This is used as both my top of rack switch but also provides layer 3 routing for my lab.  I am running a QSFP+ to SFP+ breakout cable from the rear of the switch to service two intel x520's in my compute hosts.  Cable was bought from FS.com, the Brocades are generally pretty good with any coded cable, but makes sense to get the cable coded to Intel, say if you are going to be using Intel NICs.
• Sophos XG430 - I am using the physical Sophos appliance, however I have removed the operating system and am using PFsense instead
• I am running OSPF between the two devices and have BGP running between my compute hosts to the Brocade, I am redistributing routes between the protocol.

Coming from Cisco switches, the Brocade was quite different to set up, but once you get your head around it is quite logical and easy.  

Storage:

R710 (Baremetal FreeNAS):

• Dual Xeon X5670's
• 96gb RAM
• 6x6tb WD RED's
• Dual 10gbe NIC (X520-SR2)

Management Host:

R730XD (Hosts a Virtualised FreeNAS instsance):

• Dual Xeon E5-2630v3's
• 256 gb ram
• Intel 1tb PCIE NVMe SDD - for services such as AD, vCenter, vSAN Witness and NSX-T Manager
• 8 x 1.2TB SAS HDDs + 2 x SAS 256GB SSD's
• Dell H730 mini in passthrough mode
• 4 port gigabit on-board NIC
• Dual 10gbe NIC (X520-SR2)

Compute Hosts:

2 x R720's:

• 2 x E5-2670's and 2 x  E5-2620 v2's
• 256gb RAM 
• 256gb SSD for vSAN cache per host
• 2 x 1tb Samsung Evo 860 SDD's for capacity per host
• Intel x520-DA2 NICs
• HBA330

Virtual Environment:

The management host runs all my management services for the entire environment, this includes Active Directory, vCenter, virtual FreeNAS, vRealize Lifecycle Manager, NSX-T Manager, Veeam, VMware Identity Manager, vRealize Automation, vRealize Log Insight and vRealize Network Insight.  

The storage host serves purely as storage for my lab as well as my media, this is my second tier of storage for my lab, as it is slightly slower than the virtualized instance.

The management hosts setup is generally stable and doesn't change all that often, however if I am in need of a clean slate for testing, the compute hosts are generally what get nuked and pieced back together. FreeNAS provides faster iSCSI storage to all hosts in the environment and the compute hosts use this as secondary storage after vSAN.  

The two compute hosts are in a 2 node vSAN cluster with the witness appliance sitting on the management host.

If you have any questions about configs or anything else relating to the lab please feel free to leave a comment!