How do you plan EOL for your homelab?

[SRussell]

Do you have a method for upgrading your homelab to keep it refreshed and not EOL?

I would assume certain software forces you to upgrade: VMware.

I have 3x Xeon-D 1540 systems. They work great for lab exercises, VMs/containers that are not database heavy and SDN. They completely fail at producing a usable VDI solution.

 

[Evan]

I would imagine that’s part of the reason most of us have home lab, to test upgrades and use the latest software.

If your otherwise referring to general home services then I think I would personally best describe it as a yearly update to latest stable version if it makes sense (bug fixes usually as pushed or monthly)

 

[BeTeP]

I would assume certain software forces you to upgrade: VMware

By the way, this alone is enough reason for me not to use any software which could arbitrarily make me change my otherwise adequate hardware.

 

[zunder1990]

All of the my hardware in my homelab is 2nd hand from ebay. I like it when something goes EOL b/c then more will show up on ebay driving the cost down. As for software, blueiris on windows is the only not open source software.

 

[RageBone]

i guess i EOL hardware when it dies and its not fixable, or when i have something better at hand.

 

[marcoi]

i upgrade when i get the itch to play with new stuff. my oldest hardware is dell r720 and it runs vmware fine. When Dellr740s drop in price i may pick one up and shuffle down the hardware, IE make the r730 replace the r720 and make the r740 primary box.

I'm also self employed IT consultant so my hardware expenses end up as business expense on taxes which helps with initial investment.

Before i got into enterprise servers, i just recycled my gaming pc into a server. which would be roughly every 2 years update. But since getting Servers and using laptops for work, it just easier to keep getting used servers.

 

[BoredSysadmin]

My humble lab is 3x HP desktops with ancient Sandy Bridge i7-2600 CPUs. I updated them to everything latest firmware. running 32gb each, 10gig network, and an all-flash (using very much consumer SSDs) vSAN. It is running the latest ESXi and vCenter. Used to run VMs from my disks FreeNAS with iSCSI, it was A) painfully slow and b) updating FreeNAS (shutting all vms) was too much of pain. Same for power loss recovery. Originally planned for Nutanix CE, but in the end, I decided to stick with what I know well - vSphere and vSAN.

As for EOL, It will run the same software as long it's supported and then few more years after it isn't.
If it ain't broken, don't fix it. Yes, I could go with more recent and more energy-efficient machines, but my electric bill not that bad (in the winter but spending money on upgrades will likely only pan out in a very long time frame

 

[Serverking]

usable VDI solution

Yeah also found that out, which servers are better at Linux VDI?