2 / 4 / 6 cores for general home lab ? Nested or physical ?

[Evan]

I think 6-core Xeon-d is locked in as my 24x7 General server. Don't know it it will be ESX,KVM,Hyper-V yet but it will host most of my wanted always on VM's and will be probably all SSD storage.

I want a couple of other systems for real 'play' or do I just want another bigger system and use nested virtulisation ?

I was thinking and extra 1 or 2 Xeon-d systems, question is if my workload is light is 2 cores enough or should I go for 4 or at a stretch 6 cores and why ?

Extra info:
- I have access at work to huge systems if I want to do any heavy duty play
- I have ample ddr4 rdimm memory available (by ample I mean 64 or 128gb per system)
- I won't be running 10g network for now or maybe just 1 or 2 ports but I also don't think I have a use for it.
- I have 4 weeks before I next head to USA when I will be shopping.
- small, quiet, and low power a priority (e5-2670 for me belong in the DC, think Xeon-d or NUC which I already have 1 of and Mac mini but I was thinking to divest those)

 

[Evan]

Ok I know everybody will ask what I will be running, that's just the thing it's a real lab I am thinking, playing with ceph, KVM, hyper-v, mongo DB, open stack, cloud foundry etc.
But no real need for any intense performance.

 

[Keljian]

I would go 4 cores as a minimum, cause it's easier to slice and dice threads on 4 than 2

 

[Sergio]

I'm actually in the same situation Home lab build Xeon-D but after some recommendations I think is a good idea to keep it to at least 6c. First, because it can take me time until I build the second/third node in case I decide it, so I get a decent node right away. Second I get a base CPU frequency and a max, it does not need to work at max all the time as it happens with the 2c/4c . I'm still trying to find a good provider in Europe, in the meantime I hope the prices drop down

 

[jaalsa]

Sergio, I'm also trying to build a Xeon-D based home server in Europe. Here is a real struggle to find some Supermicro Xeon-D stuff, but I contacted directly with Supermicro (Supermicro Spain in my case) and it turned out to be a pretty good way to get equipment. You could give it a try in your country.

 

[Sergio]

I'm taking a look to this site, Sona, they seem to have nice prices and the shipping cost shouldn't be that high, this is my first option but if anynbody knows a better place, probably we could open a new thread with providers for Xeon-D around Europe. Anyway, I will try to contact supermicro in my country.

 

[pricklypunter]

I guess it comes down to if your intended applications will make use of more than 2 cores. I would say go for 4 cores at the minimum, at least that way your OS will definitely have some CPU time for background tasks