With the release of vSphere 5.1 now, and some of the new features, I decided to dedicate a new series of posts just to 5.1, and install it all in my lab environment – from the ground up.

First off – this is a clean slate – I won’t be doing any upgrades – everything will be a fresh install.

Hardware:

HP ML370 g5

• Dual Xeon E5345 Quad Core
• 32 GB RAM
• 8x 146 GB SAS 10k in Raid 5
• 8x 146 GB SAS 10k in Raid 10

Since I am using a single server, I will be running mutiple nested ESXi servers. (See previous post – Creating a Nested ESXi 5 Environment)

Now onto the install:

Install ESXi 5.1:

This really is self explanatory anymore.  Insert CD, pres enter and F11 a couple of times – and you are good to go.  I did use the HP Customized image, since this is a HP server.

Prepare for Nested ESXi:

The steps are the same as with 5.0.

• echo ‘vhv.allow = “true” ‘ >> /etc/vmware/config
• Enable promiscuous mode on vswitch

Prepare for HP P4000 VSA:

I decided to use the HP P4000 VSA for a couple of reasons:  I work with it quite often, and it will integrate with SRM – which we will be installing later.

I setup 2 arrays, 1 Raid 10 and 1 Raid 5, in order to have some varied performance in my storage.  In my physical ESXi 5.1 server, I setup a datastore for each, named accordingly.

• SAS_R5
• SAS_R10

I like to label my lab storage according to the drive type, and then the raid type so it is easy to remember what I’m working with.

Ready for the next step:

At this point, I am ready for step 2 – Deploying the HP P4000 VSA.