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I'm looking at setting up a home lab to help me study for the MCSA, and I'm hoping to get some recommendations. It is going to be in the corner of my living room so I'd like it to be small and quiet, and not being a power hog is a plus, too. I'd like to base everything off of ESXi, since I'd like to get some experience using that as well. I'm planning on running Windows Server 2012 r2 and two or three other Windows 10 VMs. My budget is around $600. Would one of these systems fit the bill? https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6ZP4FH7280 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=2NS-000M-002U0 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6YC4R32709 The Dell in the third link is the most attractive to me, since it has the more powerful processor and a decent chunk of RAM already. Any words of wisdom or advice?
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Jan 23, 2017 22:54
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Thanks for the replies. I've been looking as bit more, and this caught my eye: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAC0F4XA9876 Dual processors, 16 threads, looks like I could add a bunch of memory down the road. The only things I would be concerned about are noise and power draw. Anybody have any experience with these?
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Jan 24, 2017 17:18
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I've used a couple NUCs in the past, I didn't think they would be powerful enough to run multiple VMs. I'll take a look at those, thanks!
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Jan 24, 2017 19:27
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Thanks for the advice about using an NUC as an ESXi host. With my tax return coming soon, I've got a little more breathing room in my budget, so I'm deciding between these two systems: i5 Skylake, 4 threads, up to 2.9GHz https://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC-Kit-NUC6i5SYH-Mini/dp/B018Q0GN60/ or i7 Skull Canyon, 8 threads, up to 3.5GHz https://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC-Kit-NUC6i7KYK-Mini/dp/B01DJ9XS52/ For a $200 difference, is it worh it for double the threads, higher max speed, and an upgrade from a more mobile-type CPU to one closer to a desktop? The i7 box uses more power, but it's still only 45 watts. It looks like the i7 box needs to have the Thunderbolt chip disabled in BIOS during the initial installation of ESXi, but it can be re-enabled afterwards.
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Feb 5, 2017 20:55
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