HomeLab Setup

[cmo30]

Hi, I've got a Ryzen 5000 series powered system with a 5600x and 32GB with a 1TB of storage NVME SSD im looking to set up a home lab for learning Windows server and learning Linux as well would a type 2 hypervisor be better or a type 1 hypervisor. I have tried a type1 hypervisor before to run Windows 11 in proxmox but couldn't get my drivers installed in the VM for my AMD B550 chipset and GPU ext. so I could have a VM for pc gaming and another for Windows server also couldn't figure out how to get the GPU passed through and the VM in Proxmox was slow and very laggy even with my powerful hardware any help on what would be the best setup for my home lab as far as what hypervisor I need to go with would be much appreciated.

 

Sincerely, Cory 

[tkitch]

for any gaming that is not single player, playing in a VM will be a very bad time.

 

Most anti-cheat detects VMs as a cheat now.  

 

Also, on a CPU with as few cores as a 5600x, you're gonna run into overhead issues using it as a VM Server running your main windows box on it.

[cmo30]

so basically for now I would need to stick with a type 2 hypervisor and run my Windows Server os inside of VMware workstation and then I can build a dedicated AM5 platform for my Virtualization server for dedicated VMs.

Edited July 6, 2023 by cmo30

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, cmo30 said:

so basically for now I would need to stick with a type 2 hypervisor and run my Windows Server os inside of VMware workstation and then I can build a dedicated AM5 platform for my Virtualization server for dedicated VMs.

If you just want to start learning, just run window's hyper V and run things inside that on your PC, that way your don't try and virtualize your actual gaming PC... Then you can somewhat easily just turn VM's off when you need performance for gaming or other tasks.

 

Once you are more serious about homelab, you will likely want to get a dedicated system for that role. You wouldn't need much, I ran a pretty solid system off an i3 6100 for YEARS, that ran ESXi (I wouldn't use that... I have since switched to proxmox and would recommend starting with proxmox...) and that had VM's of:

truenas

3x Ubuntu server (one of which hosted a plex server)

windows LTSC

a handful of docker containers

home assistant

 

and the i3 was never the issue...

 

So you don't need much.

[cmo30]

awesome so basically for learning Windows server and running in a VM inside of a type 2 hypervisor like VMware workstation is plenty with the 5600x and 32GB of ram I have now then do a dedicated system for Proxmox for my actual home lab setup.

[LIGISTX]

10 minutes ago, cmo30 said:

awesome so basically for learning Windows server and running in a VM inside of a type 2 hypervisor like VMware workstation is plenty with the 5600x and 32GB of ram I have now then do a dedicated system for Proxmox for my actual home lab setup.

It’s plenty as long as you turn off your virtualization when you are doing demanding work on your PC. Depending on what VM’s you set up and what they are doing, maybe leaving them on wouldn’t be that impactful. 

[Needfuldoer]

If you want a (relatively) cheap way to get a lot of cores and RAM to play with, look into LGA2011-3 and LGA2066 workstations. They'll easily get you over a dozen cores, and they take registered ECC RAM (which goes for under a buck a gig on the used market).

[cmo30]

I'm currently running my Windows server vm inside of a VMware workstation and it's currently running an active directory and DNS also DHCP I've given that VM 4 cores out of the 12 available where it has 6 cores and 12 threads and also have given the VM 16GB out of the 32GB available of RAM would this Windows server running with those servies running that i mentioned but a lot of overhead on my system while gaming as well when my Win server VM is running. 

[LIGISTX]

24 minutes ago, cmo30 said:

I'm currently running my Windows server vm inside of a VMware workstation and it's currently running an active directory and DNS also DHCP I've given that VM 4 cores out of the 12 available where it has 6 cores and 12 threads and also have given the VM 16GB out of the 32GB available of RAM would this Windows server running with those servies running that i mentioned but a lot of overhead on my system while gaming as well when my Win server VM is running. 

I would probably not have those services virtualized under your gaming PC… networking is a hard enough thing to virtualize on dedicated homelab hardware… but if your PC is down for maintenance or just general windows bullshit, you would lose your networking infrastructure. Playing around and learning is good and important, but I would advise against jumping straight into networking especially seeing as it’s virtual. 
 

But, that VM likely needs way, way less resources. You can run a windows VM on 4GB of RAM if all it’s doing is AD and DNS, and 2 threads would be plenty. 
 

Also… quote or tag people in your posts so we know to actually respond. 

[cmo30]

25 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

I would probably not have those services virtualized under your gaming PC… networking is a hard enough thing to virtualize on dedicated homelab hardware… but if your PC is down for maintenance or just general windows bullshit, you would lose your networking infrastructure. Playing around and learning is good and important, but I would advise against jumping straight into networking especially seeing as it’s virtual. 
 

But, that VM likely needs way, way less resources. You can run a windows VM on 4GB of RAM if all it’s doing is AD and DNS, and 2 threads would be plenty. 
 

Also… quote or tag people in your posts so we know to actually respond. 

thats good to know in my unifi network controller I've got a separate Network created along with a new wifi network created and my separate wifi network attached to the network I created also while i was playing hogwarts legacy while my Windows server VM was running my memory usage was at like 99% utilization but when im not running pc games my memory utilization is at 75% also would my cpu have enough power left over for gaming with my VM running 4 cores.

[LIGISTX]

10 minutes ago, cmo30 said:

thats good to know in my unifi network controller I've got a separate Network created along with a new wifi network created and my separate wifi network attached to the network I created also while i was playing hogwarts legacy while my Windows server VM was running my memory usage was at like 99% utilization but when im not running pc games my memory utilization is at 75% also would my cpu have enough power left over for gaming with my VM running 4 cores.

A VM will typically pre-allocate all of the RAM you assign to VM’s by default, so your windows server VM almost certainly was not using all 16GB, but the hypervisor will take that RAM away from the host to use… so I would reduce the RAM your giving the windows server VM, 4-6GB should be plenty. 

[cmo30]

5 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

A VM will typically pre-allocate all of the RAM you assign to VM’s by default, so your windows server VM almost certainly was not using all 16GB, but the hypervisor will take that RAM away from the host to use… so I would reduce the RAM your giving the windows server VM, 4-6GB should be plenty. 

i went ahead and assigned 8GB of ram to my Win Server VM also is 4 ores enough hopefully this is enough for the active directory including DHCP and DNS for my VM inside of the Vmware workstation Pro

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, cmo30 said:

i went ahead and assigned 8GB of ram to my Win Server VM also is 4 ores enough hopefully this is enough for the active directory including DHCP and DNS for my VM inside of the Vmware workstation Pro

8 GB or RAM and 4 cores is definitely overkill. 
 

A skill to get good at with homelab and virtualization is not over allocating resources. A Windows server VM that is handling AD and DNS for a few devices is basically never doing anything. Think of what happens when you scale up to a business with thousands of people, they don’t suddenly have hundreds of servers handling DNS, DHCP and AD, they have a few scattered across the enterprise. It doesn’t take much to do simple things like this, 2 threads is fine, and likely so is 4GB of RAM.

 

The more into homelab you get, the more VM’s and services you will have. Learning how to properly manage the resources is just as important as learning how to set it all up. On my old homelab I had a dual core with HT, so 4 total threads, and only 28GB of RAM… it hosted 8 VM’s, and 6 docker containers. If I didn’t properly manage resources, that wouldn’t have been possible. All the below ran on a dual core i3 and 28GB of RAM, and truenas alone got 16GB of that RAM, so the rest of the VM’s plus the hypervisor itself had to split 12 GB….. and it all worked perfectly fine and all VM’s were happy. 

18 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

truenas

3x Ubuntu server (one of which hosted a plex server)

windows LTSC

a handful of docker containers

home assistant

 

[Needfuldoer]

10 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

I would probably not have those services virtualized under your gaming PC… networking is a hard enough thing to virtualize on dedicated homelab hardware… but if your PC is down for maintenance or just general windows bullshit, you would lose your networking infrastructure. Playing around and learning is good and important, but I would advise against jumping straight into networking especially seeing as it’s virtual. 

I agree. Always keep the lab toys separate from the "production" machines you rely on to keep your network afloat.

[Bersella AI]

13 hours ago, cmo30 said:

I'm currently running my Windows server vm inside of a VMware workstation and it's currently running an active directory and DNS also DHCP I've given that VM 4 cores out of the 12 available where it has 6 cores and 12 threads and also have given the VM 16GB out of the 32GB available of RAM would this Windows server running with those servies running that i mentioned but a lot of overhead on my system while gaming as well when my Win server VM is running. 

That's like something called "All in One NAS" in Chinese communities. They have also called such builds as "All in Boom", meaning all services will be down once this single server runs into trouble. The more you put in a single server, the more risks you will take. As such, the backbone network in the house should AT LEAST be separated from anything other.

 

However, there are actually something the server could do on networking, such as side-gateway or VPN/tunnel. Besides these, you could put anything on the server as much as you wish -- take your own risk anyway.

 

Lastly, since the server is also serving as a gaming rig, try not putting all the home-lab stuff into VMs, but rather running native services. The native system will take over resources allocation for them.

[Valentin17]

Whats the pont for learning Windows Server in home use? I am only trying to understand that.

[Needfuldoer]

1 hour ago, Valentin17 said:

Whats the pont for learning Windows Server in home use? I am only trying to understand that.

Learning how to administrate Windows Server.