Update Home Lab?

[peanuthead]

So in short I have a chance to update my home lab from the SB architecture to Haswell Architecture. (Currently E3-1230 w/ X9SCM-F) I hardly tax the lab now but thought it might make sense it go ahead and update it. With kids in the near future coming into the picture and not being able to possibly update for the next year or two I'm thinking it would be a good idea. Looking for other thoughts and suggestions.

 

[Vader]

If it's going to cost you $ you're really not gaining that much unless you can get higher mem capacity.etc.

My lab is still 3 Servers w/dual proc Westmeres and they still work great...

 

[peanuthead]

If it's going to cost you $ you're really not gaining that much unless you can get higher mem capacity.etc.

My lab is still 3 Servers w/dual proc Westmeres and they still work great...

Actually the funds would be nominal in difference. Funny you bring up Westmere's as I've thought the same thing; all works well so just leave it be. Thanks for your input.

 

[Child of Wonder]

I'm just running some AMD whiteboxes each with a 6 core CPU and 32GB of RAM and it hums along fine. Like Vader said, increasing my memory is the only real limit I run into. Motherboards that support 64GB of RAM in the desktop space are rare and the 16GB DIMMs needed to get there are just now hitting the market. Hopefully when DDR4 comes out it'll be much easier to get there.

Unless the money to upgrade to Haswell really doesn't concern you, I would just hold onto the cash so you can upgrade to higher memory densities down the road.

 

[peanuthead]

I'm just running some AMD whiteboxes each with a 6 core CPU and 32GB of RAM and it hums along fine. Like Vader said, increasing my memory is the only real limit I run into. Motherboards that support 64GB of RAM in the desktop space are rare and the 16GB DIMMs needed to get there are just now hitting the market. Hopefully when DDR4 comes out it'll be much easier to get there.

Unless the money to upgrade to Haswell really doesn't concern you, I would just hold onto the cash so you can upgrade to higher memory densities down the road.

Definitely there with you. I run out of RAM first before anything else most of the time. 16GB DDR3 is crazy high and difficult to find a small MB that handles it. Well seems like the answer is obvious...

 

[HalfJawElite]

I currently run a pair of Tyan S5512 single proc towers. Both systems run fine with ESXi 5.5 and Server 2012 DC just fine. My only gripe with the systems is the low memory spec on each. Like Vader says, unless you need more memory it might be better to just run with the current setup. I'd very much like to sell both my towers and move to a dual proc with higher RAM cap like most hypervisor users.