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Questions on Homelab setup

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62 comments

coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

I personally haven’t had a lab in years. Back in the day, literally all I used was VMW Workstation config’d with 4-5 VMs, which did me well for what I was using it for. I need to think about actually investing in a real one...or, think about what my career forcus will be moving forward, meaning I may not even need one. 

Really great thread of comments in this post all! Lots to digest!

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
MicoolPaul
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Throwing this out there, but would having a cloud based lab be considered a home lab?

Especially with the option to automate deployment of an environment and the ability to quickly re-create it again. Suppose, one disadvantage is not having access to the underlying hardware to tinker on. 

I think that it’s almost a requirement.  I mean, you see the likes of Rick Vanover and Anthony Spiteri run labs that I think span both premise and cloud.  For sure they have to have cloud to spin up labs for cloud-base products, etc.  I mean, it’s not all of the sexiness of running hardware in your own datacenter, but for the purposes of learning and testing, I suppose it’s pretty much a requirement.  In fact, the other day I was looking for free/NFR versions of Azure to do some testing of cloud-based services as well as extending to object storage in Blob, etc.

Don’t know how you fared in your search, but if your org has an MSDN subscription, you should be able to get Azure Dev credits of around $150 per month (converted to your local currency if outside of the US). There’s some restrictions on what regions you can access certain resources, primarily where resource is more constrained, but it’s great.

Michael Paul - #VeeamLegend | #VeeamVanguard | Veeam Certified Architect | VMware vExpert | https://micoolpaul.com | Twitter: @MicoolPaul | Mastodon: @micoolpaul@masto.nu | Bluesky: @micoolpaul.bsky.social
Geoff Burke
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

Hey on this topic. What about these NUC things? i.e. very small, low power. Any suggestions?

Im testing a “mini” computers, they look great!
Better than a raspberry pi, but a bit limited.

https://lfconsulting.org/zima-board

Is in Spanish, but here the official website in English!

https://www.zimaboard.com

you’ve got different versions, it has 2 nics and, 2 sata 3, and 1 pic-e x4 port!

amazing!

cheers.

Thanks @HunterLAFR I need something small that passes the Burke Customs and Border control for tech stuff in the house, so it has to be small and not noticeable :) . I wanted to get on the Pi stuff but they were hard to get at one point and pretty expensive. However, I might revisit that. 

VMCA2022, VMCE2023, CKA, CKAD, KCNA, LFCS, PCA,TARS
HunterLAFR
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Lucky guys!
Im setting up my lab with super low power / consumption hardware, 
the electricity bill is killing me here in Spain!!

Does anyone have spare ram for a Proliant Gen 8??
128GB extra would be soooo nice!

🤣🤣🤣

cheers!

🤙

Luis F.- HunterLF - HunterLAFR - lfconsulting.org
Scott
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Lucky guys!
Im setting up my lab with super low power / consumption hardware, 
the electricity bill is killing me here in Spain!!

Does anyone have spare ram for a Proliant Gen 8??
128GB extra would be soooo nice!

🤣🤣🤣

cheers!

🤙

How much is power there? It’s about .09/kWh where i live. in CAD.  so $0.07 USD roughly.

 

Plus we can use the heat in the winter to help heat our houses hahahaha

dloseke
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Lucky guys!
Im setting up my lab with super low power / consumption hardware, 
the electricity bill is killing me here in Spain!!

Does anyone have spare ram for a Proliant Gen 8??
128GB extra would be soooo nice!

🤣🤣🤣

cheers!

🤙

How much is power there? It’s about .09/kWh where i live. in CAD.  so $0.07 USD roughly.

 

Plus we can use the heat in the winter to help heat our houses hahahaha

 

Oh wow...that’s pretty cheap...mine is more expensive - at least in the summer months, this is a lower rate for me because I have SEER 14 heat pump - people with less efficient cooling have to pay a couple pennies more per kWh.  I should be paying .0936/kWh in the summer, and .0484/kWh in the non-summer months since I haven’t used less than 1000 kWh in the past two years.  I should check my UPS and see what it’s showing for my daily usage from just the lab.  Although I still haven’t plugged my firewall/switch/modem into it yet (kids don’t like me turning off the internet terribly)….

 

 

Derek M. Loseke, Senior Systems Engineer | Veeam Legend 2022-2023 | VMSP/VMTSP | VCP6-DCV | VSP/VTSP | CCNA | https://technotesanddadjokes.com | @dloseke
marcofabbri
Userlevel 7
Badge +13

Hey @Iams3le the link you post contain a redirection from a Veeam competitor, can you clean it? 😂

Backups are like pizza, I love them. | Linkedin: @marco-fabbri-it
HunterLAFR
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Lucky guys!
Im setting up my lab with super low power / consumption hardware, 
the electricity bill is killing me here in Spain!!

Does anyone have spare ram for a Proliant Gen 8??
128GB extra would be soooo nice!

🤣🤣🤣

cheers!

🤙

 

I might be able to come up with some RAM for you Luis.  I have a couple of DL180 G8 or G9’s that are being retired…..I just need to go pick them up since I just replaced them with PowerEdge R440’s a couple months ago.

Ohhhhhhhhhh

😍

ill take your word!

one day!

thanks!

Luis F.- HunterLF - HunterLAFR - lfconsulting.org
HunterLAFR
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

I’m lucky we have so much hydro power here. 1 rate, all year, all hours. never changes.  It’s hard to calculate when different hours are busier than others, or seasons.

 

Also I can look around but threes a good chance I have some extra ram kicking around somewhere too. 

 

I just checked and I have 128GB of Hynix HMA82GR7MFR4N-UH 16GB DDR4-2400MHz PC4-19200 ECC Registered CL17 288-Pin DIMM 1.2V Single Rank Memory Module.   Too bad that won’t work in a G8. 

😭
thanks buddy!

had to try.

Luis F.- HunterLF - HunterLAFR - lfconsulting.org
HunterLAFR
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Holy Guacomole! you have a huge basement and great lab. My basement is all done and my wife said no way to anything technical so I have to hide laptops in different places. I had one successfully acting as a server on the floor until…. my cat Carlos decided to chase after a spider down there… :(

 

Actually, it’s my garage.  Basement is not as large, but I can get 4 cars in my garage and still have some space for a shop/storage area.  Unfortunately, after 15 years, it’s near filled with crap and needs a massive cleaning.

That’s huge bro!

inhave a small warehouse, but as I also read somewhere, the wife is tracing me to reduce the lab day by day!

and my Diogenes IT syndrome it’s being active many years!

cheers!

Luis F.- HunterLF - HunterLAFR - lfconsulting.org
HunterLAFR
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Hey on this topic. What about these NUC things? i.e. very small, low power. Any suggestions?

Im testing a “mini” computers, they look great!
Better than a raspberry pi, but a bit limited.

https://lfconsulting.org/zima-board

Is in Spanish, but here the official website in English!

https://www.zimaboard.com

you’ve got different versions, it has 2 nics and, 2 sata 3, and 1 pic-e x4 port!

amazing!

cheers.

Luis F.- HunterLF - HunterLAFR - lfconsulting.org
HunterLAFR
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Hey on this topic. What about these NUC things? i.e. very small, low power. Any suggestions?

Im testing a “mini” computers, they look great!
Better than a raspberry pi, but a bit limited.

https://lfconsulting.org/zima-board

Is in Spanish, but here the official website in English!

https://www.zimaboard.com

you’ve got different versions, it has 2 nics and, 2 sata 3, and 1 pic-e x4 port!

amazing!

cheers.

Thanks @HunterLAFR I need something small that passes the Burke Customs and Border control for tech stuff in the house, so it has to be small and not noticeable :) . I wanted to get on the Pi stuff but they were hard to get at one point and pretty expensive. However, I might revisit that. 

Picture comparing both

pi on the left!

 

Luis F.- HunterLF - HunterLAFR - lfconsulting.org

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