Recently, after about 2 years away, I’ve started to get back into Virtualisation. As part of that, like any true geek, I wanted to build a Home Lab.
I had some criteria for the homelab computer:
- Must be quiet
- Should be power-efficient/low power. Energy in the UK is expensive!
- CPU must support Intel VT-x with EPT, and VT-d virtualisation technologies
- Under £600 (roughly $1,000)
- System must be powerful enough to run nested hypervisors (enough RAM, CPU and Storage capacities)
- Minimal self-build. I don’t have the inclination to build a white-box solution. If you do, check out Chris Wahl’s awesome resources.
And some nice-to-haves:
- Compact physical footprint
- Preferably run VMware ESXi without any installer ISO hacks or driver mods
- It should have enough Storage capacity to host AutoLab and some Hyper-V instances, too.