Hello all,

I would really appreciate some help in guiding me to setting up my home lab please?

I've recently acquired the following pieces of hardware:

Dell T710 dual xeon, 32gb ram, 10x SAS = 3TB @ raid 1+0
TP-Link SG108E switch

I have already installed ESXi 6.7 via internal usb on the server and it's fully functional and can log in.

Now my aim is to achieve and learn the following but I am not sure of the best "let's say" path to go down to get to my goal...

The picture in my head goes like this:

Internet <----> Virgin Media Router <----> Switch + VLANS <----> Server <----> pfsense giving IP's to the VLANS? <----> vSphere VM's running all sorts of gems like PLEX, My coding environment + Ansible + Puppet etc etc, Minecraft server for my little ones and whatever other crap I am into next month LOL!

I just don't know what would be the best way to get this up and running? Do I do VLANS on ESXi? or simply just different vSwitches? Do I create the VLANS on the switch or on pfsense? I would love to have pfsense control the lot and I can turn on and off access using it's web portal when required.

If you kinda understand any of the above then please do lend a hand and give a REAL NEWBIE some ideas.

Cheers in advance.

For the most part a virtual environment needs to be looked at like any physical configuration.

A client vm could be a firewall OS. You'd normally assign two virtual nic's to that system.

From there you'd have a green and red (or orange) and can vlan off the green to your clients. Not sure you fully need vlans but you can.

Not sure I'd have selected esxi for a home system but see this article for some starter on networking. https://www.nakivo.com/blog/esxi-network-concepts/