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I was wondering if any of the folks here had recommendations for something budget minded to work on studying virtualization? I don’t mind building, but I would prefer repurposing older hardware. I have seen recommendations for Dell Precision and HP Proliant servers, but thought I was check with the community.

I will be sitting for my VCP in the next couple of weeks so it would be additional practice (old MacBook that did this died and now needs replacing). My family wouldn’t appreciate a huge server but I can work around maybe a desktop size or so.

Thank you in advance.

6 Spice ups
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I built my home server from parts purchased at Micro Center.

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If building a VMware ESXi box, check the HCL.

Pretty much any modern Intel/AMD x64 CPU is supported.

Most on-board SATA (esp. Intel ICH based) is supported (as is most SCSI/SAS RAID).

You may need to get an Intel or Broadcom NIC, or look into a custom built ESXi install to add drivers for whatever is on your motherboard. (Often RALink)

For home kit, that’s pretty much it.

Put as much memory as you can into it and away you go.

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Or you can build a beastly PC, install Win8.1 and run client hyper-v or install vmware workstation/virtualbox and setup labs using a type 2 hypervisor.

Or install Hyper-V core and manage it from another PC, Hyper-V is much less picky on the hardware.

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For learning at home, I like vmware workstation for the fact I can nest hypervisors and create some pretty good lab scenarios. Can’t do that with Hyper-V :slight_smile:

Right now I have a Hyper-V lab setup and an ESXi lab setup in vmware workstation, that way I can play with both whenever I want.

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PC/laptop, I7,16gb ram, 256gb ssd, with 2tb usb external drive to store vms/os iso’s that you are not using

personally , I use a hp microserver 8gb ram that handles a couple of vms , at work I have a 4 yr old i7 laptop with 16gb ram 256gb ssd, running VMware workstation which handles 4-6 servers easily, just not sccm/sql/exchange, which will cane it

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There are a ton of these type of threads already on the community. Checking some of these might be a better option to see others outcomes as well.

http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/739917-cheap-server-for-a-home-lab

http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/829229-what-hardware-for-esxi-home-lab

http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1061959-home-lab-picking-a-server

Above are a couple

3 Spice ups
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Yep, and the first one was one I made awhile back on my personal account :stuck_out_tongue:

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I bought at spec out Lenovo ThinkServer TS440 from Amazon for about $500. When I was done using it for virtualization, I repurposed it as a home server that is basically a file server/HTPC. Lenovo wanted $1400, Amazon was cheaper. Can also do a white box build.