I’m pretty much new to all things homelab as I’ve only started looking into it because of my job. I’m relatively new to my position (first job I got after getting my degree), so I wanted to learn more about virtualization and other related tools that could help me.

I want to practice using VMs and such. VMware vCenter, ESXi, PowershellCLI, Microsoft Windows Servers, RHEL, and others. And while my work does provide me a remote production environment for these, it’s not always available to me. A lot of other people work on them and I can’t really just go in and start messing around.

So I’ve been looking into getting a homelab setup for myself. I’m just not really sure what I should be going for, though. Do I get a Dell Poweredge Rxx0? I do have a PC of my own that I’ve been using with Hyper-V and VMware Workstation to create VMs of what I mentioned, but I dunno if I should just get a dedicated server or not? Should I just upgrade my RAM and add in some SSDs on my PC and would that work fine for me?

  • VelociCatTurd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Something to keep in mind, those poweredges are loud. If you don’t care about the noise or if you won’t have it turned on all the time maybe it doesn’t matter. There are ways to get the server quieter, but if noise is a concern then it would be easier and maybe even cheaper to build a server yourself. You don’t need a Xeon to do VMs, you don’t need a metric fuck ton of ram, don’t feel like you need “enterprise” level of gear to learn and have fun.

    • bane_killgrind@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I have a proliant 2u and I punched a hole in the wall between my office and garage just to get it out of earshot.

      I’m going to disagree on RAM. If you have some cast-off hardware like I do, maxing out the ram is the cheapest way to get older hardware performing decently.

    • modesto_hagney@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      I found an old 3u server chassis and put a regular atx motherboard power supply in it. 4 noctua 80mm fans and it’s relatively quiet for a server.

    • Trickloss@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      So if my PC had 32gb of RAM, I should be fine with running VMware vSphere, Windows Server 2016 AD DC, and some Linux VMs that could run other tools like system monitors and such on it together? At least for just practice and not really running them 24/7 like an actual server would?

  • Fubar91@lemmy.world
    21·
    1 year ago

    Look around the used market in your area. Likely can build a cheap baremetal system.

    It might be best in the learning stages to keep your lab seperate from your daily driver machines, incase you mess up.