Home lab environment

[asahni]

Hi guys,

I want to build he lab for trying stuff that I cant do in production environment. I would need to host 6-7 vms, which in total would need 32 gb ram or more.
Can you please suggest economical and robust components that I may use for this. aud$1200 is max budget.
thanks
Aman

 

[alceryes]

Whatever you find, remember to check compatibility before you buy (assuming you are going with vmware) - http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php

Search for 'esx whitebox' for a ton of good suggestions - https://www.google.com/search?q=esx+whitebox&rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS722US722&oq=esx+whitebox&aqs=chrome..69i57.2079j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

My ESX host is running on a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H (6VM's, 32GB's RAM, i5-3570k). Truthfully, you can pick up a cheap, few-generations-old system that would do fine. My motherboard's NIC wasn't compatible with ESX 5.1 so I just picked up an Intel NIC to go along with the build.