Favorite hypervisor for home lab?

[buulam]

In publishing Home Lab Server Build Using an Intel NUC and Free VMware ESXi 7  and supplemental video, I got several folks suggesting I try Proxmox. In conversation with @AlexBCT , it sounds like it is his go-to lab hypervisor as well. I may consider rebuilding my hypervisor in the next couple of months.

Curious what everyone else is using?

For those on Proxmox, what do you like about it?

[mihaic]

I am using also Intel NUC and Vmware  ESXi 7. 

I also have an eve-ng VM, where I've installed an F5 VE machine.

[buulam]

I haven't encountered eve-ng. Any interesting features to note with it?

[mihaic]

Eve-ng is useful when you want to do a networking lab with different types of devices like F5, Cisco switches/routers, etc. Of course, you will need the  OS for each. 

This is what my small F5 lab topology looks like:

this eve-ng is a VM on an Intel NUC.

net 1 is for management.

net 2 is so I can access the VIPs from my home network.

the other boxes are small linux boxes (web servers and a client)

[buulam]

Ah gotcha, so this is a better alternative to something like GNS3?

[AlexBCT]

I had a play with EveNG a while ago, but was surprised how poorly it was being maintained (slow releases and features). Love the idea of the layout that they had, but the lack of updates put me off. How is that looking nowadays? What are your experiences with it? (...or did I just not take enough time to appreciate it? 😉 

[Kai_Wilke]

Tried VirtualBox and VMWare but then finally switched to Hyper-V on my Windows PC. The reason to use Hyper-V is an absolute flexible VLAN and NAT configuration.

Background: My LTM-VE has plenty interfaces to play with, some of them in different route domains so that for example VS-RD1 can have a pool objects pointing to VS-RD2 as pool member. I basically just need an F5 without any backend web servers to simulate everything. 

Hyper-V allows absolute transperent network access from my PC to all F5 Interfaces, between different F5 interfaces and also allows all F5 interfaces to have transparent internet access using my PC as default-gw.

Definately worth a try if you are using a Windows PC. 

Cheers, Kai

[buulam]

Not a Windows user here but that's interesting. Is this network interface setting different than Bridging mode on VMWare Workstation?

[Kai_Wilke]

I really struggeled to have a router sitting in between all VNETs allowing transparent access while granting internet access via my PC at the same time independently what connection I'm using (VPN, WLAN, LAN).

Hyper-V just did that by adding a couple internal VNETs and executing a single Set-NetNAT command per VNET. My PC has become a L3-Router and SNAT gateway to external networks. No manuall bridging and/or constant VM reconfiguration needed...

Tbh... I was really impressed that Hyper-V is doing something way better than ESX or VirtualBox 🤣

This is the config^^ 

Cheers, Kai