In this first part of the VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab series we will take a look at the hardware and software components used. Next we will look at the Network Topology and IP address schema we are going to use to build the lab.
Hardware
The host system I am using is a Lenovo Thinkpad L480 running Microsoft Windows 11 having below hardware configuration.
- Intel Core I5-8250U CPU @ 1.60 GHz x 8
- 32 Gigs of DDR4 SDRAM
- Intel Integrated Graphics
- 500 GB Samsung Solid State Drive (highly recommended)
Software
We will be using below software’s to build the home lab:
- VMware Workstation Pro Trial – https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation-pro.html
- pfSense virtual firewall appliance community edition to mimic real world network zones – https://www.pfsense.org/
- Openfiler virtual storage appliance for supporting NAS and iSCSI storage protocols – https://www.openfiler.com/
Network Topology
For our VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab we will be using the below network topology. We will setup the pfSense Community Edition virtual firewall appliance to configure different network zones as shown below in order to mimic the real world network setup.
IP Address Schema
We will be using the below IP address ranges for different network zones that we will be creating. You can follow the same or use different IP addresses depending on your preference.
| Interface | IP Range | Netmask | Gateway | VMware VMNet |
| WAN | 192.168.1.0 | 255.255.255.0 | 192.168.1.1 | Bridged |
| LAN | 10.100.1.0 | 255.255.255.0 | 10.100.1.11 | VMNet1 |
| Management, vMotion, FT | 10.100.1.0 | 255.255.255.0 | 10.100.1.11 | VMNet1 |
| Storage iSCSI / NFS | 10.100.2.0 | 255.255.255.0 | 10.100.2.11 | VMNet2 |
| WEB / DMZ | 10.100.3.0 | 255.255.255.0 | 10.100.3.11 | VMNet3 |
| APP / DB Servers | 10.100.4.0 | 255.255.255.0 | 10.100.4.11 | VMNet4 |
| Clients | 10.100.5.0 | 255.255.255.0 | 10.100.5.11 | VMNet5 |
VMware Home Lab IP Address Schema
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