Power $$$$$$$$$

How much money per month does it cost to run a physical home lab?

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How long is a piece of string?

There are so many factors to consider that make that an impossible question to answer. How many devices do you intend to buy for your lab? And how many of those devices need to be switched on at the same time? And how often will you lab? Your lab does not need to run 24/7, only when you're using it, and then only the kit you're actually using at that time needs to be turned on, so for the most part it shouldn't affect your electricity bill too much.

And then what will you use for clients - virtual interfaces, routers, physical PCs, virtual PCs (and will they run on a PC or a server). Again you can't even begin to guesstimate how much they'll cost to run. If you use many physical devices you'll probably use more electricity than if you use virtual machines running on a single PC or server. PCs will potentially use more electricity than routers and less than a server, but that's a guess, you'd have to buy devices that measure power consumption to get a true idea of which devices are more power hungry than others.

carterw65

I am currently building out a new lab. I had a full blown CCIE INE lab before with like 10 routers and 4 switches, but I moved away from that.

What I have right now is a Dell 1950 iii server with 32G RAM and 2 processors running VMware ESXi with CSR1000V router VMs. You can run as many routers as your machine has memory for. I will be in the market soon for 4 3560E switches (the switches I had before weren't mine) to connect to the 2nd NIC of the server. Using the ESXi networking I can connect the CSR routers to the switches.

The Server only cost me like $150 and the ESXi and CSR are free (eval copies that you can refresh). I think this setup is a really cheap way to go and with switches will cost $800 or less. The key is this should be able to take you from CCENT all the way to CCIE if that is your goal.

If you want to run VIRL, I would not get the 1950 though. You will need a x5500 series processor or better. Mine only has L5420s and they don't support nesting. If you had a server that supports VT-x/EPT (nesting) it will work for the CSRs or VIRL.

I was doing OSPF labbing last night on it and it worked awesome. One thing is, if you only want it for CCNA or maybe CCNP, you don't need the 3560E switches, you can get by on a cheaper model and still have an awesome lab for pocket change.

Sy Kosys

My power draw was negligible, even in the heart of summertime. If I were to guess, I'd say an extra $10-15 monthly for 4-6 switches + 1 router + 1-2 host machines.

Like GDaines mentioned, the lab is not a 24/7 operation. I may have had mine up a couple hrs a night with 3-6 on weekends.

theodoxa

My power bill runs $175 to $250/month. $250 was with multiple pieces of equipment running in July/August. With just 1 3560E switch and an ESXi 6.0 server, it runs about $15-25 less. You could look up the datasheet for each device and it usually shows Power Draw at 5% and 95%. Add the 5% figures for all your equipment.

720 Hours x (Watts / 1000) x Price/KWH

For example, a 2960-24TT-L uses 26W at 5% throughput.

720 Hours x (26 Watts / 1000) x 0.12334/KWH = $2.31/month.

The 2960 is pretty efficient. My 3560E by comparison uses 124W.

720 Hours x (124 Watts / 1000) x 0.12334/KWH = $11.01/Month