Hyper V server for Home

[soulreaper11207]

I'm looking to build a at home Windows 2016 HyperV server to run and test a windows environment. They old build it yourself and try to break it. Anyone have any hardware recommendations? Will want to run at least 2 vm servers and an handful of client OS. Should I look into another Hyper-visor to cut down on resource overhead? Thanks in advanced. 

[jake9000]

If you're using hyper-V server you will find that resource overhead is pretty minimal. One nice thing about hyper-v is you get all of the advanced features for free. That said, if you just want a basic setup you will find esxi free is easier to work from. Administrating hyper-v server with RSAT from a non-domain computer is kind of a pain and the local console is just a powershell prompt which you may or may not be fine with. 

For hardware, it depends on your VMs and tasks. 

HDD/SSD: For long term, around 50GB per windows guest. For short term, 32GB per. Windows updates are killer... also note that with windows server, disabled features are actually not present on thedisk and need to be downloaded when you enable them. 

Memory: 4GB per windows guest. Technically, 512MB is the minimum but it's not fun to work with. 

CPU: I like at least two cores per VMs. You can oversubscribe your processor (assign more vcores than physical cores) with minimal consequence depending on your workload. 

 

My personal homelab v-host is an intel NUC 7i5BNH with 32GB memory and a 1tb samsung qvo ssd. I replaced a Dell R710 with it because I didn't like all the noise it was making (and had a decent tax refund). Total cost was around $670 pretax and it is overkill for the task, used enterprise gear is like half the cost for similar performance. 

[soulreaper11207]

9 minutes ago, jake9000 said:

If you're using hyper-V server you will find that resource overhead is pretty minimal. One nice thing about hyper-v is you get all of the advanced features for free. That said, if you just want a basic setup you will find esxi free is easier to work from. Administrating hyper-v server with RSAT from a non-domain computer is kind of a pain and the local console is just a powershell prompt which you may or may not be fine with. 

For hardware, it depends on your VMs and tasks. 

HDD/SSD: For long term, around 50GB per windows guest. For short term, 32GB per. Windows updates are killer... also note that with windows server, disabled features are actually not present on thedisk and need to be downloaded when you enable them. 

Memory: 4GB per windows guest. Technically, 512MB is the minimum but it's not fun to work with. 

CPU: I like at least two cores per VMs. You can oversubscribe your processor (assign more vcores than physical cores) with minimal consequence depending on your workload. 

 

My personal homelab v-host is an intel NUC 7i5BNH with 32GB memory and a 1tb samsung qvo ssd. I replaced a Dell R710 with it because I didn't like all the noise it was making (and had a decent tax refund). Total cost was around $670 pretax and it is overkill for the task, used enterprise gear is like half the cost for similar performance. 

Hmm. I didnt know that you could use one of those tiny buggers like that. Thanks for the idea!