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jlbenedict
2[H]4U
- Joined
- May 22, 2005
- Messages
- 2,207
Looking to have about $1000 (+/- $50) to budget for some equipment to setup a lab. Primary purposes would be to lab for MCSA/MCSE exams, "production" file/media server, and would like minimum of two hosts, to set up a VMware HA cluster.
My current hardware/lab isn't quite up to even modest standards, and I've been debating on whether to use my budgeted funds to upgrade the hardware to get the lab up to a reasonable level of usability.
I currently have (3) HP Z200 workstations, unfortunately, only possessing 4gb of memory each.
They are LGA1156 based, dual core with two of them having Intel i3-530's (2.93 ghz) and the other one having an i3-540 (3.06 ghz). The maximum amount of memory these supposedly support is 16GB (4x4).
Also have a Lenovo ix2 network storage device, that supports NFS and iSCSI protocols. Its not exactly a speed demon, with only 1 gb lan port, and it currently has two 2tb WD Green drives.
So, the one option is to upgrade the memory on all the hosts; turn one into a storage server, and upgrade the networking on my lab environment. Cons of this are, the HP's are warranty exhausted; hardware is proprietary. So, if I lose a power supply, I can't just throw a regular ATX power supply in it.
Another option is to make due with the Lenovo ix2, and setup an Intel NUC lab.. This would sip power.. Cons are only one networking port, per node, and memory upgradability.
I've also priced out two whiteboxes, and it appears I could put together two, FX-6300 based hosts, with 32gb of ram for under $500 a piece. Could squeeze in a small SSD for each host , and run less IO influenced VM's from the Lenovo (domain controllers, etc)..
Then, there is the Dell 6105 option. I love the price of this, but I've read a few horror stories about bad firmwares, IPMI, etc.. the prices are definitely right on this.. The cons though, as from what I understand, that the cloud servers are custom type of proprietary hardware and there is not much support.
Price is right though, as I could pick up two complete servers, in addition to getting a barebones or two for spare parts for well within my budget.
Then, the last option I was looking at were something in the Dell R610 or R710 line.. Or possibly setting up an AIO type of server, and run nested virtualization.
Just really trying to get a good idea of getting the OPTIMAL use out of my $1000 budget.
My current hardware/lab isn't quite up to even modest standards, and I've been debating on whether to use my budgeted funds to upgrade the hardware to get the lab up to a reasonable level of usability.
I currently have (3) HP Z200 workstations, unfortunately, only possessing 4gb of memory each.
They are LGA1156 based, dual core with two of them having Intel i3-530's (2.93 ghz) and the other one having an i3-540 (3.06 ghz). The maximum amount of memory these supposedly support is 16GB (4x4).
Also have a Lenovo ix2 network storage device, that supports NFS and iSCSI protocols. Its not exactly a speed demon, with only 1 gb lan port, and it currently has two 2tb WD Green drives.
So, the one option is to upgrade the memory on all the hosts; turn one into a storage server, and upgrade the networking on my lab environment. Cons of this are, the HP's are warranty exhausted; hardware is proprietary. So, if I lose a power supply, I can't just throw a regular ATX power supply in it.
Another option is to make due with the Lenovo ix2, and setup an Intel NUC lab.. This would sip power.. Cons are only one networking port, per node, and memory upgradability.
I've also priced out two whiteboxes, and it appears I could put together two, FX-6300 based hosts, with 32gb of ram for under $500 a piece. Could squeeze in a small SSD for each host , and run less IO influenced VM's from the Lenovo (domain controllers, etc)..
Then, there is the Dell 6105 option. I love the price of this, but I've read a few horror stories about bad firmwares, IPMI, etc.. the prices are definitely right on this.. The cons though, as from what I understand, that the cloud servers are custom type of proprietary hardware and there is not much support.
Price is right though, as I could pick up two complete servers, in addition to getting a barebones or two for spare parts for well within my budget.
Then, the last option I was looking at were something in the Dell R610 or R710 line.. Or possibly setting up an AIO type of server, and run nested virtualization.
Just really trying to get a good idea of getting the OPTIMAL use out of my $1000 budget.
)