Need advice for a newbie on building a homelab
Need advice for a newbie on building a homelab
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?
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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.
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.
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.
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?
32gb of RAM should be fine. What’s the core count on your CPU?
It's an AMD CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads
Plenty specs for just playing around. If you already use Linux it's a breeze
Hell yeah dude, that’s perfect.
Edit: I would start with what you have. If you do want to build a server, this is a good resource:
https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-anniversary-2-0-snafu-server-needs-a-friggin-upgrade/1075
What I also like to do is to upgrade my main rig and then I can move my older parts to the server, where possible.
That's a good idea. Too bad I've recently just built my current PC and won't upgrade for another 5-6 years, though. I've also passed down my old one to my sibling.
Don't torture yourself by trying to host anything on a Windows machine ("server" edition or not). And yes, 32gb is more than sufficient.
Oh, I was just trying to copy what they have at my workplace, since it would be better if I was familiar with it. And it did work out great since I was able to fix a bug and complete a task that they had for a while thanks to setting up a VM of Windows Server DC and fiddling around with it and RHEL.
Is hosting on a Windows machine not ideal? Don't really have much experience with other OS to make a good assessment.
I’d say this, companies deploying new windows server installs aren’t long for this world.
Even banks and insurance companies are pushing to containerization, Linux, and the cloud.
Well, if your goal is to upskill for the specific system your company runs, no other choice really.
But otherwise Windows is extreme fringe in the server world and basically all software is written for Linux or *BSD. Of course with WSL or VMs you can somehow make it work, but it is overly complex, insecure and lacks the flexibility a Linux native system has.