Homelab Servers

[littlewicky]

I am a college student studying Network Engineering, and was wondering if anyone in Canada has dealt with http://canadaserver.wix.com/canadaserver

My goal is to pick up a couple of servers and set up a lab environment where I can test different things. Primarily they will be a Virtualization cluster, I have not decided if I will go Hyper-V server or ESXi. The question is has anyone dealt with this company?

 

I have thought about building it my self with normal consumer orientated gear, but I don't know if I can compete with the price. Is there something that I am forgetting to consider? I have thought about the noise and am leaning towards the Dell's R710 over a 2950.

 

Is there anyone in the community either with a Homelab that has any advice?

 

Thanks for the help!!

[leadeater]

Unfortunately I have not dealt with the mentioned company, don't live in Canada Anyway they seem like good deals to me and it is best to stick with server equipment rather than custom build consumer gear. Not just for compatibility but just so you get used to the layout and design of servers, swapping disks, power supplies etc.

 

My home setup consists of:

FortiWifi 60D

Cisco SG300

Intel Custom S5520HC/SC5650 2x Xeon water cooled Corsair H55

IBM x3500 M4

 

The Intel server is nice and small which I use to take around to places when required and is extremely quiet due to the water cooling. I swap between ESXi and Hyper-V depending on what I want to try out.

 

The IBM server is my permanent one that I built a custom box to cover it and filter the air coming in. This one runs all my VMware stuff licensed with VMUG EVALExperience.

[dzonidev]

-snip-

 

Let's consider the fact that they are using WIX.com for their site. In my opinion this is shady as hell. Besides they are not offering anything that you can't find on eBay or Craigslist for the same price or even cheaper.

 

Yes buying used brand name servers is usually cheaper. The R720 is a newer generation, the 2950 from the site has a little more value to it. I'd get the R720.

[legopc]

Get your homelab shit from ebay, waaay cheaper. That site is a ripoff.

[littlewicky]

Let's consider the fact that they are using WIX.com for their site. In my opinion this is shady as hell. Besides they are not offering anything that you can't find on eBay or Craigslist for the same price or even cheaper.

 

Yes buying used brand name servers is usually cheaper. The R720 is a newer generation, the 2950 from the site has a little more value to it. I'd get the R720.

I have checked out Ebay, but most of the listings I have seen are from the USA. I don't know if it is worth the hassle since duty/import tax can be a pain in the ass to deal with. Gotta love UPS. As far as locally goes, no one in my area is selling gear like this. And if they are, it is a server that is running DDR2 ram for $700

What is bad about WIX? I don't have experience with any website hosting companies.

One of the professors bought 2 R710 from these guys. And he didn't have a bad experience with them, and he believes they are decently priced.

[dzonidev]

-snip-

 

I'm just looking from a professional standpoint, WIX is free website hosting and it is known to be used for "short term" operations sometimes even scams. But if you know someone who successfully dealt with them, in that case you have no problem.

[BiggHertz]

If this is going to be used primarily as a "sandbox" and you have a decent PC/Laptop setup now, you can utilize VMware Workstation PRO as a virtual lab and accomplish most of what you will need.

 

Remember with Virtualization clusters, it isn't just about the physical hosts themselves, but this would include shared storage (iSCSi,FCIP,FC,SMB,etc) and managed switch(s) to build out properly. R720 is nice hardware, and i have over 500 (e5-2680 & 512GB) of them still in production in the pure role of ESXi 6.0 hosts in multi node clusters. But has a combination of L3 switches,40GB,10GB,1GB and robust SAN infrastructure supporting them. But this is a production shop, where HW like that is necessary and the ability to power and cool it is a small factor in the overall ROI of visualization. 

 

Do you plan on leaving this up 24/7? Think of power requirements and cooling requirements.

How many nodes do you want to support?

What Storage Implementation to do you have now?

Network infrastructure?

 

There isn't a whole great deal to be gained on spending the money on decent hardware if the rest of the supporting subsystems are incapable of supporting it.

 

Build consumer level grade items that support the necessary features of the visualization platforms that you aspire to run.

 

(LOCAL SINGLE NODE)DISK/ (SAN/NAS - Cluster)DISK&NETWORK - Build for RANDOM I/O the more VM's or higher disk activity, the more robust this MUST be build

RAM - More Ram = More VMS, still doesn't excuse poor decision making in VM Resource Provisioning =)

 

Hope that helps,

 

-Jason

[leadeater]

i have over 500 (e5-2680 & 512GB) of them still in production in the pure role of ESXi 6.0 hosts in multi node clusters.

 

Damn that's a lot of servers We have about 55 but half are for SRM failover. You must have a crazy amount of VMs.

[littlewicky]

Hope that helps,

 

-Jason

 

Thanks for the advice. At the moment I am hosting a couple of VMs are a normal desktop. My goal with the lab is to provide an environment that would be more similar to one found in a business. I have always loved browsing r/homelab, which has given me the idea of doing something like this. 

 

The server would not be powered on 24/7 unless I find a scenario that might required it, but then it might be on for only a couple of days. As far as network infrastructure goes a have a eye on some older Cisco routers and switches that a friend is selling. They are only 10/100, but I think they will be fine for the beginning.

[BiggHertz]

I would invest in better networking and storage before investing in such stout host machines, you will be battling a lot of resource contention causing much frustration, especially being a lab environment where thing will need to be redone frequently as part of an exercise. This will just ruin the joy of learning of such amazing technology =)

 

Just imagine creating 10 VMs during an exercise, where the link to your storage array is only 100Mb/s. Divide that by the number of VM's 10, you get 10 Mb/s. And that is the theoretical bandwidth without overhead. That is 1 MegaByte/sec at best. Than let us talk about storage, 1 PC on a single HDD is slow by modern standards, now let us have 10 attack the same disk with random I/O. Talk about a serious bottleneck. That is like a Ferrari engine's intake being reduced to the size of a straw. 

 

Have you reviewed the VMware Workstation Pro?

 

If physical is a must and 3 node clustering is desired.

3 Decent Hosts,

2 Quad Port Gigabit Nics/host (1 quad port if you don't care about teaming the nic interfaces)

2 L2 managed switches (Must Support Vlans, can get away with one, but not real life scenario as 2 is 1 and 1 is none in the event of failure)

2 Storage boxes, Quad port nic ,build storage array wiht higher random IOPS in mind, flash based would be best for this as many spindles would be cost prohibitive (1 if on super budget, however 2 is proper config for enclosure failures) 

oh and I highly recommend a separate machine to host vCenter Server =)

 

 

Hope that helps?!?!?

 

-Jason