Server for home lab

[cgeo]

Hello forum,

I am a unified communications consultant and I think it is time for me to have a home lab to play around. Typically my lab will consist of the following

Topology 1
-- Around 10-12 windows servers and a couple of sqls servers.
-- A domain controller in win server 2012 / DNS etc
-- 2-3 windows 10 as client machines

Topology 2
-- 10 linux appliances running informix db
-- 2-3 windows machines service as client machines
-- windows server as domain controller / DNS etc

it is possible that one topology will be running at any given time but I would prefer of course to have both of them on if the server can cope with the load.
Since this is a lab environment there will be no load on the servers and mostly they will be running idle
The above is a must have

As a like-to-have :

-- possibility to play around with vmware technologies using nested esx's
-- running a file server / media server
-- running an openvpn virtual machine
-- running a networking vm (pfSense?)
-- sth else i cannot think of right now

I would like to have an all-in-one box (if possible of course) because space is limited
I have been looking around for weeks trying to set things clear on my head and I came across a potential candidate

Supermicro | Products | SuperServers | Mini-ATX | 5028D-TN4T

The Xeon D-1540 is pretty new as far as I have seen but people are very enthusiastic about it especially when used for virtualization

But since I have never built a virtualization lab I have no idea if this is an overkill or just not enough for the purpose I need it?
Would you consider any other server or cpu/mobo ?

 

[whitey]

That's a solid foundation for what you're trying to do and your requirements. Plenty of horsepower w/ 64 or 128GB memory population to run those 20 or so win/lin VM's and a small handful of utility VM's you mentioned. A lot of us are also building out cheap v1 2011 systems. YMMV.


If you're tryin' to sip power the Xeon-D is probably the right choice granted you can stomach the pricetag for now.

 

[gea]

Pentium-D is quite new.
I would propably stay with a Socket 2011-R3 board with a Xeon and an LSI HBA plus an Intel X540 10G nic and ipmi
to use ESXi with a storage VM in pass-through mode, ex ASRock Rack > EPC612D4U-2T8R

 

[Patrick]

@cgeo where are you located?

 

[Diavuno]

that's a great little box, make sure you load up on ram if you plan on running many VM's

 

[cgeo]

Thanks for your comments everybody!
Do you have any other barebones that might do the work just as nice with a smaller price tag ? And to be able to keep it for at least 3-4 years without having to replace it

Unfortunately I don't have the knowledge nor the time to build one on my own although I really want to

@Patrick I live in Belgium

 

[Diavuno]

I've had good luck finding cheap R430's.