I have been long overdue for a home lab. Several years ago, I built a whitebox dual-cpu workstation, not really for virtualization or anything, but had fun building it. Since then I have been working for VMware for a number of years, so virtualization and lab needs have steadily grown to the point where I really must have something available at home for dev/test and training.

I began researching at the end of May and through June; reviewing other whitebox home lab blog posts, articles, and videos. Once I determined the amount of resources I wanted, I started shopping. Fortunately, I had a decent budget to work with, but an unsure plan as to how many servers I wanted.

Important considerations must be taken when planning a whitebox home lab that is to be used with VMware products such as ESXi 4.x and beyond. In particular, chipsets, NICs, CPU capabilities, etc…

To get started with this series, I'll first outline what I was considering from a high level:

Overall: AMD or Intel?

Option 1:
A pair of Desktop-class workstations with single cpu (quad or six-core) and shared storage

Option 2:
A Server-class system with dual processors. + A single workstation as described in option 1 and shared storage

Option 3:
A Server-class system with dual processors and shared storage

Determining which of the above options to choose is a balance of functionality and budget. If opting for only a single server, I will surely need to run some unsupported VMware configurations such as virtual ESXi server(s) if I want to be able to test things such as failover or automation of cluster(s)/Host(s). In any case, I plan to have a  current version of ESXi booting from a flash drive so hopefully I'll be able to find a motherboard that supports such a configuration - preferably with an internal USB port to plug a thumb drive into!

Stay tuned for my next article in the series: Choosing Home Lab Hardware for a Whitebox ESXi Server!