Hello
Looking to build a new home lab. I have a basement area however still looking for a quiet set up since I could move in the future. So noise should be kept low however more importantly I will be keeping things on 24x7 and would like low power consumption. Budget is on the low to medium side
Typically I need to setup the following:
a) Demo environment consisting of (to stay on 24x7)
4 x Large VMs - 4 vCPU w. 16GB RAM
8 x Small VMs - 2 vCPU w. 4GB RAM
b) QA Testing environment (turn on when needed)
1x Large VMs - 4 vCPU w. 16GB RAM
6 x Small VMs - 2 vCPU w. 4GB RAM
c) Home environment (to stay on 24 x7)
Plex Server - 4 vCPU w. 8 GB RAM
Time Machine Server - 2 vCPU w. 4 GB RAM
General Use Server - 2 vCPU w. 4 GB RAM
Means that I need to run 24 x 7:
40 vCPU w. 112 GB RAM
As well as at times:
4 CPU w. 12GB RAM
I was thinking getting a Dell R630 with following spec:
Chassis
1 x Dell R630 (1U) 8x SFF Hot-Swap SAS - Hot-Swap PSU - iDRAC Enterprise Licence £200.00
Processor(s)
2 x Intel Xeon E5-2630L V3 - 8-Core 1.80Ghz (20MB Cache, 8.00GTs, 55W) £40.00
Heatsink(s)
2 x Dell PowerEdge R630 Heatsink £10.00
Memory (RAM)
4 x 32GB - DDR4 2133MHz CAS 12.50 (PC4-17000, 2RX4, ECC REG) £125.00
RAID
1 x Dell PERC H730p (2GB NV) Mini Mono R630 Kit £250.00
Network Connectivity (rNDC)
1 x 1Gbps, 10GbE (Dual Port) SFP+, RJ45 CNA - Dell X520+I350 £60.00
Rack Rails
1 x Dell A7 PowerEdge R320, R330, R420, R630, R640 Ready Rail Kit £50.00
Power Supply(s)
1 x Dell Hot-Swap PSU 750W 'Platinum' £20.00
This comes out just below budget at around $1500 however with no storage.
I plan on running VMWare ESXi 6.7 using a VMUG license.
I was also considering getting a Synology NAS for cover the storage side however was also reading about VSAN which would be covered under the VMUG Experience license.
Questions:
Would 32 threads across the 2 E5-2630L CPU's be able to handle the 40 vCPUs ?
- There is a pretty large price jump when moving up to the 12C version of these CPU.
Would segregating the environments using VMware virtual networks using pfSense work ok ? or should I look at adding a hardware managed switch?
Could consumer grade Samsung SSD's work in the Dell R630 in the VSAN ? If so what would the better size SSD to use be ? Go for few larger or more smaller sized SSDs?
Since I might in the future buy a second rack mount server I was considering using shared storage instead of local storage. What is VMware compatible and recommended ? Synology ? I would rather not build myself though due to time involved.
Looking to build a new home lab. I have a basement area however still looking for a quiet set up since I could move in the future. So noise should be kept low however more importantly I will be keeping things on 24x7 and would like low power consumption. Budget is on the low to medium side
Typically I need to setup the following:
a) Demo environment consisting of (to stay on 24x7)
4 x Large VMs - 4 vCPU w. 16GB RAM
8 x Small VMs - 2 vCPU w. 4GB RAM
b) QA Testing environment (turn on when needed)
1x Large VMs - 4 vCPU w. 16GB RAM
6 x Small VMs - 2 vCPU w. 4GB RAM
c) Home environment (to stay on 24 x7)
Plex Server - 4 vCPU w. 8 GB RAM
Time Machine Server - 2 vCPU w. 4 GB RAM
General Use Server - 2 vCPU w. 4 GB RAM
Means that I need to run 24 x 7:
40 vCPU w. 112 GB RAM
As well as at times:
4 CPU w. 12GB RAM
I was thinking getting a Dell R630 with following spec:
Chassis
1 x Dell R630 (1U) 8x SFF Hot-Swap SAS - Hot-Swap PSU - iDRAC Enterprise Licence £200.00
Processor(s)
2 x Intel Xeon E5-2630L V3 - 8-Core 1.80Ghz (20MB Cache, 8.00GTs, 55W) £40.00
Heatsink(s)
2 x Dell PowerEdge R630 Heatsink £10.00
Memory (RAM)
4 x 32GB - DDR4 2133MHz CAS 12.50 (PC4-17000, 2RX4, ECC REG) £125.00
RAID
1 x Dell PERC H730p (2GB NV) Mini Mono R630 Kit £250.00
Network Connectivity (rNDC)
1 x 1Gbps, 10GbE (Dual Port) SFP+, RJ45 CNA - Dell X520+I350 £60.00
Rack Rails
1 x Dell A7 PowerEdge R320, R330, R420, R630, R640 Ready Rail Kit £50.00
Power Supply(s)
1 x Dell Hot-Swap PSU 750W 'Platinum' £20.00
This comes out just below budget at around $1500 however with no storage.
I plan on running VMWare ESXi 6.7 using a VMUG license.
I was also considering getting a Synology NAS for cover the storage side however was also reading about VSAN which would be covered under the VMUG Experience license.
Questions:
Would 32 threads across the 2 E5-2630L CPU's be able to handle the 40 vCPUs ?
- There is a pretty large price jump when moving up to the 12C version of these CPU.
Would segregating the environments using VMware virtual networks using pfSense work ok ? or should I look at adding a hardware managed switch?
Could consumer grade Samsung SSD's work in the Dell R630 in the VSAN ? If so what would the better size SSD to use be ? Go for few larger or more smaller sized SSDs?
Since I might in the future buy a second rack mount server I was considering using shared storage instead of local storage. What is VMware compatible and recommended ? Synology ? I would rather not build myself though due to time involved.