Replacement homelab advice

GodAtum

GodAtum

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I currently have an old Dell R610 with ESXI running VMs such as pfsense, unifi, plex etc. It's using about 200W and running 24/7. As electricity is getting expensive I'd like to upgrade and add redundancy without increasing costs.

Was thinking of making an HP MicroServer Gen10 Plus (Xeon E-2224) cluster with 3 nodes which should use about the same amount of power. It will have paid vSphere and vSAN distributed across the 3 nodes. I'll also add a Intel 10gbe NIC (low profile) for the vSAN part, add the iLO card, add more RAM to make 32GB each and each will have a 1TB Samsung 860 PRO SSD. I'll be putting them on shelves in a rack.

Does that sound sensible? Any alternatives that are cheaper to the MicroServer with similar performance? The E-2224 get a Passmark score of 7454.
 
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I think for the cost of 3 gen10+ you could build a single more powerful box for less money, but that might not provide you with what you want from the lab I suppose if playing with vsan?

Which CPU are you going for in the Gen10? If Ryzen is on the HCL for your ESX version of choice it may well be cheaper to use that and build 3 small boxes to the spec you need - you'll end up with a higher memory limit, more IO, and a wider CPU choice.

If sticking to prebuilt - the new Dell T40 can often be found cheap with a Xeon and 16gb, has reasonable expansion options, quite compact for a tower.

None of the alternatives are quite as cool as the new Gen10 from a form factor POV though - unless spending a fair few quid on decent chassis etc
 
I'm a big fan of the NUCs for Homelabs, power efficient, small and quiet but they are fairly expensive, especially if you want to build a 3-node vSAN Cluster.
 
My preference is the Supermicro SuperServer 5028D-TN4T, or "Lab DC in a box" as I like to think of it (128GB RAM, 1x M.2, 2x 2.5" internal, 4x 3.5" hot plug).

There is also the E200-8D or E300-9D if you want a smaller form factor and more RAM (on the 9D), but at the expense of drive slots and noisier fans.
 
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