Finally, I’ve started to build my own dedicated VMware homelab. Here, I’m going to present my requirements, constraints and decisions regarding the hardware platform of my homelab.

It must meet the following requirements:

  • Support nested virtualization
  • Must fit into my existing small 19″ rack used for my home IT infrastructure
  • Must be capable to run ESXi 6.7 or higher
  • Must provide enough computing resources to allow for parallel execution of several VMs, i.e. vCenter, NSX-T, vRA 8, vROps, vRLI, vCD
  • Must support the usage of SSDs for acceptable performance

As usual there are some constraints:

  • Budget is limited
  • Only 1 Gbit uplinks to my Cisco switches are available

Based on this considerations, I’ve come up with the following bill of materials:

  • ProLiant DL360p Gen8 with
    • 2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 v2 @ 2.60GHz 6C/12T
    • 256 GB ECC Memory
    • HP Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331FLR Adapter
    • Smart Array P420i Controller
  • 4x Samsung 1TB SSD 870 EVO (cheaper consumer disks but still sufficient for me; plus they work without any problems with the disk controller)

I bought the ProLiant server as a refurbished system for 700 EUR which included two old magnetic SCSI disks, which I replaced with the four Samsung SSDs for 500 EUR. This makes a total of 1200 EUR, which I would consider acceptable compared to setups comprising of either multiple consumer PCs or Intel NUCs to get similar computing resources. Also, I don’t need to deal with external storage systems thanks to the four harddisk bays, and the system has an out-of-band management (iLO 4) included, which is really nice, as I don’t have to go into my “server room” to power on/off the server.

Although ESXi 7 is not officially supported on this platform, the installation with a vanilla ESXi 7.0 U2 image was working like a charm.

The only drawback so far is that the power consumption of this server is quite high (approx. 280 Watts). But I can bear with that, as I don’t run my lab 24/7.

On top of the hardware expenses, I upgraded my VMUG membership to the Advantage option for 200 EUR to get access to 365-day evaluation licenses for all of my required VMware solutions.