Having a VMware home lab is important to learn products like VMware Cloud Foundation. In earlier posts I’ve already provided a comprehensive description of how to setup such a lab.
In this article, I’m going to have a fresh look on my lab, especially on the foundation of it — the hardware BOM.
I’ve deployed my VMware home lab back in late 2021, with the following hardware (see also this post):
| Component | Details | Price |
|---|---|---|
| ProLiant DL360p Gen8 | 2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 v2 @ 2.60GHz 6C/12T 256 GB PC3L-12800R DDR3 ECC Memory HP Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331FLR Adapter Smart Array P420i Controller | 1100 € |
| 4x Samsung 1TB SSD 870 EVO | Cheap consumer disks, which work perfectly with the HP array controller | 500 € |
| Total | 1600 € |
If I would build the lab again in 2025, I would probably go for a ProLiant DL360 Gen9. This model is not officially supported with ESXi 8.0, but it runs without problems. You can get comparable models for around 900 – 1000 €.
Speaking of hardware compatibility, I had also no problems in upgrading my old Gen8 lab server to ESXi 8.0.
Finally, here is a picture of my home server rack and the lab server:
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