How to Setup Test Lab Environment

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How to Setup Test Lab Environment

michael.r.ford1

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Points: 51
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April 24, 2018 at 12:51 pm

#337418

Hello Everyone!
My name is Mike, I 'm a Junior DBA with roughly four months of experience. I'm setting up my own test lab and I need some help.
Here is a list of the equipment I have at my disposal:
Equipment
1x Dell PowerEdge T610 w/Window Server 2012 R2 & SQL Server 2014
- 2x SATA 500GB Hardrives
-1x SATA 2TB Harddrive
1x Dell PowerEdge T420 w/ESXI 5.5
-14x SAS 1TB Hardrives
I want to create an environment where I can design and test HA/DR strategies, as well as, test new technologies and versions of SQL Server.
I'm open to any and all recommendations. Especially books or YouTube videos that would me gain a better understanding. I am also willing to invest some money and purchase recommended classes.
Thank you,
Mike Ford

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sgmunson SSC Guru Points: 110639 More actions · Answer 1

You didn't mention how much RAM the boxes have, although it's a shame you don't have identical hardware. One thing you may well get is experience recovering an environment on non-identical hardware. If you have some serious RAM, you might try creating some VMs, and see how that affects things.

Steve (aka sgmunson) 🙂 🙂 🙂
Rent Servers for Income (picks and shovels strategy)

michael.r.ford1 Valued Member Points: 51 More actions · Answer 2

sgmunson - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 2:43 PM
You didn't mention how much RAM the boxes have, although it's a shame you don't have identical hardware. One thing you may well get is experience recovering an environment on non-identical hardware. If you have some serious RAM, you might try creating some VMs, and see how that affects things.

Thank you for responding Steve!

The T610 has 24 GB
The T420 has 64 GB

Im following a step by step guide to setup a virtual environment.
https://sqlundercover.com/2017/12/18/creating-a-sql-server-test-lab-on-your-workstation-part-one-installing-the-domain-controller/

Any additional feedback is greatly appreciated.

Mike Ford

sgmunson SSC Guru Points: 110639 More actions · Answer 3

michael.r.ford1 - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 6:11 AM
sgmunson - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 2:43 PM
You didn't mention how much RAM the boxes have, although it's a shame you don't have identical hardware. One thing you may well get is experience recovering an environment on non-identical hardware. If you have some serious RAM, you might try creating some VMs, and see how that affects things.
Thank you for responding Steve!
The T610 has 24 GB
The T420 has 64 GB
Im following a step by step guide to setup a virtual environment.
https://sqlundercover.com/2017/12/18/creating-a-sql-server-test-lab-on-your-workstation-part-one-installing-the-domain-controller/
Any additional feedback is greatly appreciated.
Mike Ford

Well, with that much RAM on the T420, you can create two 24 GB VMs and have the primary box be the T610,and practice setting up the 2 VMs as secondaries in whatever HA/DR scenarios you come up with. You can also practice failing the primary and seeing the results. I'm probably not the best source of HA/DR info beyond testing the crap out of whatever you come up with.

Steve (aka sgmunson) 🙂 🙂 🙂
Rent Servers for Income (picks and shovels strategy)

Sue_H SSC Guru Points: 90860 More actions · Answer 4

You can definitely play around with different HA/DR configurations as Steve described. If there is something in use at your company that you aren't real familiar with or comfortable with, I'd probably set something that up as well. With those servers, you can totally hose things out and no one is affected.
You may want to emulate something like the storage totally going out, screw up the entire instance so that you can practice restoring everything - system as well as user databases. Being able to restore everything is incredibly important. Everyone can backup but it's not worth much if you can't restore.

Another thing outside of those servers is that you can also play around with some of Microsoft's cloud with a free account for a month. You can get some additional time if your company has enterprise or other agreements (spends a lot of money) with Microsoft. You'd want to check with whoever does your software agreements/licensing with Microsoft. Here is a link for the basic free account:

Create your Azure free account today

Sue