Home Lab

[Hyburnate]

Hi all,

Hope this area of the forum isn't completely dead

I need to go about building a home lab again - I currently have an N54L, think it's running 16GB RAM off the top of my head, not entirely sure! It currently runs as a NAS essentially providing as network storage for the household. I want to remove it's current use and make it work as a time machine backup - consider this out of the picture.

However, I also want to further my skills in Windows Server, I'm dealing with it a lot more at work and I really want to further my knowledge in it. To do so I want to put together a home lab, I'm currently going through Server+, Security+ and CCNA and then the hope to pursue some Windows Certs when the time is right.

I want to ensure I've got a good base to allow more options moving forward, I can't seem to find any Gen8 or Gen9 Microservers on the market, and the chances are I can get some funding through work for this so money isn't a huge issue, but space and noise is - I want to buy right rather than compromise and cry. I know WS isn't hugely demanding but it probably won't stop with WS.

What do I buy? Do I bin the N54L, get a Synology or something similar and get a server with pure guts rather than sticking the disks directly in? A RAID card will probably be a good addition.



Anyway, rambles aside. What do I buy?

 

[Hyburnate]

I really wouldn't bother buying specific hardware for baremetal messing around with WS. I'd just run it in HyperV or VMWare on your desktop and use the opportunity to gain experience with that too.

Heck you could even do it in Azure and get experience with that, it's becoming a big part of Microsoft's focus on newer certifications.

Issue is, my main machine right now is a Macbook Pro. Desktop has pretty much been shelved.

I don't think it's going to stop with WS to be honest, probably play around with VMS software, piHole, Home Automation and pfSense - I can quickly see it becoming 1 or 2 servers...

 

[Hyburnate]

the gen8 microservers have been replaced, but you might be able to find one with a bit of hunting. they fit the space requirement but can get a bit noisy if you deviate from recommended hardware, for example putting in a non approve NIC or HDD's without temp sensors the system can read will make the fan speed increase, and in some cases quite a bit

That's my struggle, considering the Dell T30 now, or a couple.

 

[Hyburnate]

There is the gen10, not much more expensive and easy to find. I read a review a while back and decided not to jump across - have upgraded my gen8 with a 8 thread lv cpu so performance would have been lower.

The Gen10 seems to be a bit meh if I'm honest - I think I'm going to go down the T30 route or see if I can get a T20 as that seems to take DDR3 rather than 4.

 

[Hyburnate]

Yep, limited iLo for some reason, and cannot upgrade the CPU at a later date if needed You do get up to 32GB now, but...

I guess gen 8's prices will go up over time

The T20 takes a Quad Xenon and will take DDR3...

So might try to track down two of them. They seem to have plenty of PCIe slots, plenty of expandability.

I'd love to go back rack mounted but I got moaned at last time.

 

[Hyburnate]

If you want a proper server then have you had a look on the bay? My home server is a tower which I picked up off the bay which I have upgraded along the way with cheapies that I’ve bid for on the bay, currently has 96gb of ram, 8 320 sas 2.5” drives and 8 500gb sata 2.5” drives installed. I run server 2016 on it so that I can run hyper-v on it but my main virtualisation software is VMware workstation. Have at last count 3 environments running on it which I can switch between.

What base have you used?

 

[Hyburnate]

I must admit that I have a similar setup however I went for the TS140 (And then added a T20) as I couldn't justify the price for the (Then G8) microserver as it seemed the only benefit of it was the caddy mounted drives and small form factor case.

IMHO I wouldn't recommend a G10 Microserver however I'm quite biased as I have had a few lemon units. If you can I would try to find a Xeon T30 Dell as they have slightly more power, are cheaper (Normally), have an upgrade able CPU slot, 4 DIMM slots and also take DDR4.

I have the T20 and hardly ever hear the fan spin up and it's never had any issues (Currently running 4/5 VM's with 32GB RAM) and from what I can see the T30 is just using a slightly newer CPU architecture but with the same case, fans and build quality

I have a couple of T20 and T30s at work, they're awesome and what I think I'll end up going for to be quite honest I may go for the T20 just becuase it's DDR3.