You don't really need CPU power. You need RAM to cater for your VMs. You need a decent disk subsystem unless you want everything to crawl.
My home setup is a Dell PowerEdge (a low end model). It's a quad core CPU, but barely uses anything, so don't worry too much about this part. It has 12GB of RAM in it. I think most high end consumer boards will support 16+ GB of RAM, so I'd look for something like that. Exchange 2010 or MOSS 2010 would be 2GB VMs. SCOM would also be. So factor getting a board that gives you up to 16GB of RAM (or at least 8 as a minimum). Disk is the next thing to focus on. If you want to run all of these OSes off one or two disks, things will crawl. Either get multiple SATS disks and put them into a RAID array -or- consider getting a couple of SSDs for the most disk I/O intensive VMs. I bought 2 x 120GB SSDs for my home server, and keep 2 x 2TB regular drives. The 2TB drives hold the VHDs for Windows Home Server, the VHD for WSUS patch storage and other bulk storage. But the SSDs hold everything that doesn't require a lot of space (e.g. Forefront TMG, Exchange 2010). Brian's suggestion of getting something like a Precision or low-end PowerEdge (or even an XPS) from the outlet store is a good one. Cheers Ken From: Jonathan [mailto:ncm...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, 13 January 2011 7:37 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: OTish? - Building a home lab from scratch Alright ladies and gents, I'm looking for suggestions and pitfalls to avoid (aren't we all?). I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I'm probably one of the few tech heads out there that doesn't have a home lab setup, and I think it's about time that I change that. We've had numerous discussions on this list about home vmware setups and personal SANs etc, and I'd like to hear some suggestions on what I should start with, mistakes to avoid, etc. I'm on a budget - I don't have thousands to spend, but I've got to start somewhere. Here's what I've got right now that is potentially useable (I'm not set on using this stuff, but right now it is just collecting dust): * 3 or 4 old Dell Optiplex desktops (one MT form factor, and 2 desktop form factor) with P4 procs and a couple Gigs of RAM * Broadband Cable connection @ 10 Mbps * (my wireless router just recently died) * 2 free standing two post 7 foot racks (that I was thinking about tying together to make a 4 post rack) I'd like to focus on Windows Server 2003/2008 & Powershell. Exchange, Sharepoint, and SCCM are of particular interest, and so is vmware (I will probably want to play with Hyper-V, but don't have much need for it.) Ultimately, I'd like to include some Cisco as well, as I have a good (albeit basic) Cisco background with PIXes, ASAs, and Catalyst switches. Oh yeah, and Linux too... Finally, I'd also be interested in suggestions for how to [legally] obtain MS licensing on the cheap if that's possible - 120 day evals aren't really going to cut it. Action Pack? MSDN? Thanks, Jonathan A+, MCSA, MCSE ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
