Home Lab Hypervisor
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I'm looking at getting a server to upgrade my home lab. I'm considering this refurbished Dell R710: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R710-2x2-26GHz-Quad-Core-E5520-32GB-2x1TB-PERC6-iDRAC6-4-Port-NIC-/171528441604?hash=item27efe44f04:g:epUAAOSwe-FU3OWV&autorefresh=true
I'm planning on running XenServer and (initially) using XenCenter on Windows 10 to manage it. I may look at upgrading memory down the road, and possibly processors if necessary. (I'll more than likely invest in a comparable second hypervisor before doing that)
This will primarily be used for testing out opensource applications, hosting my own private SVN and GIT repositories, working on application development using Java, Python, and Ruby, systems automation using Ansible, Vagrant, etc..., and more than likely supporting a couple of Docker Hosts. I want something that is beefy enough to run upwards of 20 VMs comfortably (primarily Linux/Unix).
Thoughts? Suggestions? Recommendations?
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Sounds like a good plan to me!
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Are you developing for Windows? If not, why manage this from a Windows 10 machine, instead of some Linux option?
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More or less perfect hardware but I think if you shop around you might get a better deal. I often see them with much higher end cpus for less dollars.
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@Dashrender said:
Are you developing for Windows? If not, why manage this from a Windows 10 machine, instead of some Linux option?
If you have Windows around, it works better, sadly. XenCenter is Windows only, still.
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@Dashrender Cuz I plan on playing with XenOrchestra once I have time to set it up. I already have XenCenter installed for testing purposes. And I have never used XenServer or XenCenter, so it will be a learning experience.
I've been using Linux for the last couple of years, so I'm shifting back to Windows to (eventually) try to pick up some powershell to complement what BASH experience I have. I've got a decent handle on using virsh, qemu-img, and virt-manager with KVM; I thought I'd take a slightly different approace to round things out with Xen.
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I am very interested in hearing about XenOrchestra.
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These days with has cheap as cloud hosts are I don't think it's worth the costs of a home setup.
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@Jason said:
These days with has cheap as cloud hosts are I don't think it's worth the costs of a home setup.
yeah, maybe. The OP says he wants 20 VMs. At $5/m/VM that's $100 a month. 4 months and this server is paid for (not counting any additional disk he adds, or power costs), and that's assuming he can manage on the lowest VMs at DO available.
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For product it is hard to beat the big cloud providers. But for a lab there is still a ton of wiggle room.
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@Jason said:
These days with has cheap as cloud hosts are I don't think it's worth the costs of a home setup.
I don't know my home lab probably costs me 30-40$ a year in power. I run ~15 VMs at a given time (fewer now). Plus I have the flexibility to assign as many resources as I want to those VMs without having to pay more money.
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My home labs always costed way more than that in power.
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@scottalanmiller said:
My home labs always costed way more than that in power.
Well, you lived in expensive areas and probably had 10x more servers/.
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This was like two. In rural Upstate NY which is the same region that @coliver is in.
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@coliver said:
@Jason said:
These days with has cheap as cloud hosts are I don't think it's worth the costs of a home setup.
I don't know my home lab probably costs me 30-40$ a year in power. I run ~15 VMs at a given time (fewer now). Plus I have the flexibility to assign as many resources as I want to those VMs without having to pay more money.
Power is what I was referring to. Some cloud ones only charge you when powered on
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@Jason said:
@coliver said:
@Jason said:
These days with has cheap as cloud hosts are I don't think it's worth the costs of a home setup.
I don't know my home lab probably costs me 30-40$ a year in power. I run ~15 VMs at a given time (fewer now). Plus I have the flexibility to assign as many resources as I want to those VMs without having to pay more money.
Power is what I was referring to. Some cloud ones only charge you when powered on
Right... my server runs 24/7... which would be very costly if I hosted it in the cloud.
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@scottalanmiller said:
My home labs always costed way more than that in power.
One whitebox server with a really lightweight processor and RAM. The spinning rust is what chews up all the power.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
My home labs always costed way more than that in power.
Well, you lived in expensive areas and probably had 10x more servers/.
Power is fairly expensive around here. I think a bit above the national average.
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@Jason said:
@coliver said:
@Jason said:
These days with has cheap as cloud hosts are I don't think it's worth the costs of a home setup.
I don't know my home lab probably costs me 30-40$ a year in power. I run ~15 VMs at a given time (fewer now). Plus I have the flexibility to assign as many resources as I want to those VMs without having to pay more money.
Power is what I was referring to. Some cloud ones only charge you when powered on
No major cloud does that. I'm not aware of any that do that, actually. They all (AFAIK) charge as long as the VM exists, powered on or not.
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It was suggested that it is worthwhile to grab a server with the H700 raid controller over the PERC6i. Would this build be a better value then?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R710-2x-E5620-2-4GHz-Quad-72GB-H700-DVD-iDRAC6-2x-power-8x-trays-/221920398089?hash=item33ab7c8b09
And if so what drives would you suggest buying since this comes without storage.
