[TriLUG] Home lab setup recommendation

[Rogers, Matthew via TriLUG]

I did a homelab analysis a few months ago, everyone has their own answer, but this is mine.

A Dell T7600 refurb ~$1000 with 128GB of ram and 16 Xeon CPU cores. This takes ESXi 6.0 and completely works with zero tweaking.  These are $12,000 new.....
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Precision-T7600-2x-2-60GHz-8-Core-E5-2670-128GB-RAM-1TB-HD-H310-No-OS-/381763039168

Running ESXi 6.0 now includes the HTML5 console that works great.  The Dell T7600 is a workstation so it uses server grade components, like Xeon CPUs and ECC memory, and since it's a workstation is quiet and small (mid tower!).  HP makes some great stuff as well z620/z680, but they are >$1500 for the same CPUs.

I wouldn't buy anything older than the E5 series for CPUs.  I run some SSDs in it and am running around 16 VMs without any performance issues.

Matthew Rogers
Senior Security Manager
O: +1.919.329.1130    M: +1.919.691.4636
allscripts.com | matthew.rogers2 at allscripts 

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-----Original Message-----
From: TriLUG [mailto:trilug-bounces+matthew.rogers2=allscripts.com at trilug.org] On Behalf Of vikram sai balaji ulaganathan via TriLUG
Sent: Wednesday, January 4, 2017 12:48 PM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion <trilug at trilug.org>
Subject: [TriLUG] Home lab setup recommendation

Hi All,

Available hardware:

I have an old HP DV6700 laptop with intel core 2 duo 2.16 GHZ and 3GB RAM.
This has ubuntu in it.

I also built a small desktop of AMD Athlon X4 860K (quad core) 3.7 GHZ with NVidia GT 610 graphics card. This has ubuntu as the primary os while arch Linux is used when blender is needed.

Requirement:

Learning Blender:

I wanted to learn blender and only Arch Linux was the best option to enable proprietary cuda driver to speed up my rendering. So I have to be physically on my desktop to do the rendering. The problem is that my desktop is connected to my TV (Only TV at home) in the hall and I have to be close enough to do all the work and it affects everyone else.

I wanted to see if I can cluster the HP laptop and desktop and run VM's on them.

The idea is to use the laptop as a mini server to first create my blender files with low resolution rendering and once I am satisfied with my changes, move it to the desktop and start the rendering there with more fine tuning.

Running DLNA & learning sys / app containers:

Also I wanted to run dlna server on my laptop to save power. And multiple VM's on my desktop to try different OS / servers, just to gain experience in system and app containers.

Questions:

1. Has anyone clustered two different architecture based machines and created servers as a home lab?

I have seen videos of XenServer (Xen Project), Proxmox, Pelican HPC, OpenVZ, archivista.ch (did not work) & bhyve. I have yet to understand clustering multiple architecture. I am a newbie when it comes to clustering / home lab setup.

2. What would be your recommendation on servers at home and is there a gui / web based software similar to proxmox or xen that I can use on my personal laptop (not the HP) to control their start / stop and connections to VM's created in them.

My primary preference will be free of charge software / one-time fee.

Thanks to all in advance for your advice

Vikram
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