Question Home Server Virtualization Recommendation

[boosted1g]

Was looking to get outside perspective/experience/recommendation for a cpu for virtualization (and any other suggestions that you can provide).
Initially looked at 12th/13th gen intel cpu's but looks like the E cores have to be disabled for virtualization to work (thus dropping all of those options down to 8 core cpus).
Thus was looking at possibly a 10th gen i9 (10 cores) or a ryzen 5900x (or open to other suggestions). Intel seems the more suited choice for VMs and has integrated graphics, but lower core count, and noticeably older vs the ryzen.

Current setup includes a Windows 10 box (in a 4U chassis with an i5-9400f) to function as file server, local access web server, download server, reverse proxy, and some other services. I also have an asus mini pc running debain + home assistant, and another server on a pi (not needing GPIO pins). Would also like the option of running another windows VM and possibly a pfsense VM in the future.
I was looking to virtualize to reduce the amount of computers (would like to reduce power consumption), and also because the motherboard in the Win10 server has very limited PCI lanes.
I am needing the new setup to support at least 2 x8 cards (a raid card and a dual 10gbe card), and also 2+ m2 ssds. Board+CPU+Memory budget is around $900-1000.

Was also wondering if there was any issues/concerns about running hyper-v 2019 or vmware OS. I would prefer to make the windows OS a VM because there is A LOT to setup/configure if I had to redo it all from scratch.

 

[kanewolf]

Was looking to get outside perspective/experience/recommendation for a cpu for virtualization (and any other suggestions that you can provide).
Initially looked at 12th/13th gen intel cpu's but looks like the E cores have to be disabled for virtualization to work (thus dropping all of those options down to 8 core cpus).
Thus was looking at possibly a 10th gen i9 (10 cores) or a ryzen 5900x (or open to other suggestions). Intel seems the more suited choice for VMs and has integrated graphics, but lower core count, and noticeably older vs the ryzen.

Current setup includes a Windows 10 box (in a 4U chassis with an i5-9400f) to function as file server, local access web server, download server, reverse proxy, and some other services. I also have an asus mini pc running debain + home assistant, and another server on a pi (not needing GPIO pins). Would also like the option of running another windows VM and possibly a pfsense VM in the future.
I was looking to virtualize to reduce the amount of computers (would like to reduce power consumption), and also because the motherboard in the Win10 server has very limited PCI lanes.
I am needing the new setup to support at least 2 x8 cards (a raid card and a dual 10gbe card), and also 2+ m2 ssds. Board+CPU+Memory budget is around $900-1000.

Was also wondering if there was any issues/concerns about running hyper-v 2019 or vmware OS. I would prefer to make the windows OS a VM because there is A LOT to setup/configure if I had to redo it all from scratch.

CPU cores is seldom the limiting factor, memory is. Cores can be shared, memory can not.

 

[palladin9479]

I am currently running my own ESXI server at home, it acts as both a lab and a home infrastructure server.

Hardware
CPU: 4 CPUs x AMD Ryzen 5 2400G with Radeon Vega Graphics, at least a four core with integrated graphics.
MB: Some ASRock board (think B450). General board, not a big deal since we'll be using an add in NIC instead of onboard.
Memory: 64GB DDR4 RAM (4x16GB I think)

NIC: Dual port Intel10GBe NIC, can also use a dual port 1GBe as they are cheap.
Intel(R) Ethernet Controller X540-AT2 < this is the most important part

Storage:
NVME: Samsung 970 EVO 1TB
SATA: Samsung 830 256GB (had laying around)
HDD: WDC WD10EZEX-08W 1TB

ESXI is installed on the NVME with the spare space being a datastore for VM storage. The SATA SSD is also used as extra storage and it's where my second Active Directory Server is running.

I have 4 different network segments defined as vSwitches.
vSwitch0: LAN, connected to Physical Port 0 on the Intel NIC. This is where most VM's reside along with the management port for VMWare. I am using 10Gbe because I also have a NAS device exporting iSCSI here.

vSwitch1: WAN, connected to Physical Port 1 on the Intel NIC. This is where my FIOS internet is pluged into and my Router/Firewall VM routes traffic through here.

vSwitch2: LAB, connected to my virtual firewall. This is where I put LAB VM's that I am playing around with.

vSwitch3: DMZ, connected to my virtual firewall. This is where I put any server I want to expose to the internet, currently running a VPN server that I use for remote connecting to my home when I travel.

If you want additional information can hit me up in private message as this can get really technical. For anyone doing stuff like this, I highly recommend the $200 USD a year VMUG Advantage subscription. It gives you yearly ESXI keys for all their products to run in your home lab for non-commercial / development / LAB purposes.