Build your Lab with Ravello Cloud - Experience the true benefit as a vExpert

You can experience the true benefit as a vExpert from Ravello Cloud to build your own home lab with few easy steps. I was really worrying about my home lab and it was getting old with these new VMware releases. Buying new hardware is not an easy task in a country like Sri Lanka. You have to spend hell amount of money to refresh or build your Home Lab with new and compatible hardware for your home lab. Ravallo helped me to bring up my new home lab and I’d like to Thank You for the vExpert subscription.

So, I thought to write this article about building an own home lab with Ravello Cloud.

Then You can start creating application on your Ravello cloud by click on “Create Application”

Type Application Name and a description relevant, In my case I’m not going to add anything from the blueprint

Now application as created and I’m going to upload the ISO images which I’m going to use in my Home Lab. Ravello provides you an empty ESXi and we need to upload an ISO image to the Library and start provisioning my hosts. There are some pre-configured images and I’m not going to use them in my Lab application.

Select “Library” and click on “Import Disk Image” option

You have to install the VM import tool in your computer, select the tool up on your desire according to your Operating System. I’d like to use the tool with the GUI.

It will download as .exe file and install the tool in to your computer

Once you install the tool it will open your web browser and prompt you to enter your credentials for Ravello Cloud.

Type your Ravello credentials and it will redirect to the tool’s interface

Click on “Upload New Item” option and select “Upload a disk Image (ISO,VMDK, QCOW) to import an ISO image and click on “Start” to begin the upload.

Upload will begin in few seconds

Once it completed the upload my image can access in the Library

Now I’m ready to provision an ESXi host in the Ravello Cloud

Go to your “Canvas” in the “Application” Section Click on the “+” sign on the left top corner, drag and drop the “Empty ESX” in to your Canvas.

Change the attributes of the ESXi VM such as Name, description, IP configuration, boot order, disk sizes, number of disks etc from your right hand side console, map the uploaded ISO image to start the installation.

Once you are done with the Configuration Click on “Publish” on top to publish the application. It will prompt you the details of your application and Optimization over Cost and Performance, once you are happy with the configuration. Publish your application by clicking the “Publish” button

Once your VM provisioned in your canvas you can see the “Start, Stop, Restart, Console, More” button available and click on Console to view the ESXi VM console.