I’m delighted to release AutoLab version 2.6, the biggest new feature is support for vSphere 6.0. You can download the new deployment guide and packages from the AutoLab page.

With vSphere 6 VMware have vastly increased the amount of RAM required to install vCenter and the minimum RAM to run both vSphere and ESXi. This means that you can no longer build the core lab with less than 16GB of RAM. If you want to add a third host, VSAN or View then you will need even more RAM so it is good that 32GB is more achievable in a low cost home lab than a few years ago.

The other great new feature of AutoLab 2.6 is the ability to use public cloud to host AutoLab, so you may not even need to upgrade your lab to be able to play with AutoLab. I’ve been working with Ravello Systems, a start-up who have built a hypervisor that runs on top of AWS or Google Cloud. This is some very cool magic that I wrote about here. On the Ravello platform you can have a lab that you rent by the hour and only pay for while you’re using it. A three ESXi server AutoLab costs under $3 per hour to run, At that rate you could run the lab every evening for a month at a lower cost than buying a new machine. Another benefit of Ravello is that you can run multiple labs in parallel, something I often want to do as I’m working on different projects.