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Refurbished T5500 for Virtualization Lab

jah8887jah8887 Member Posts: 81 ■■■□□□□□□□
in Virtualization
Hi,
I was looking at this T5500 to use for installing a few vms.  I have a copy of Server 2016 Essentials I would like to vm if possible but also an instance or 2 of Linux, Ubuntu etc...  I am looking to increase the memory size but my budget is limited to under $500.  Anything cheaper I should look for to support what I would like to do or should I aim on beefing this up?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883161379&ignorebbr=1
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    Tekn0logyTekn0logy Member Posts: 113 ■■■■□□□□□□
    I would look for Dell Precision or HP z800/820 with dual sockets and at least E5 v2 Xeon with 16GB or more. What kind of license does 2016 Essentials have? 2012 Essentials is limited to a single socket w/32GB and the box you are looking at is a dual socket. You might be better off with KVM, Xen or VMWare ESXi. If you are a Microsoft fan, Try 2019 Hyper-V. You might find some licensing deal with your school for VMWare.

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    jah8887jah8887 Member Posts: 81 ■■■□□□□□□□
    Server 2016 Essentials license is for single socket only I see.  I was thinking about using VMWARE ESXI and experimenting with it as I have not used it before.  You think that 32GB will be enough memory or should I aim for 64 or higher?
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    Tekn0logyTekn0logy Member Posts: 113 ■■■■□□□□□□
    If your VMs are all Dev/Test/Lab, 32GB should be plenty:  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started-19/sys-reqs-19

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    jah8887jah8887 Member Posts: 81 ■■■□□□□□□□
    Thanks for that.  I am looking to continue getting certs that I can do with small labs until I can save up for bigger labs that are needed.
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    Tekn0logyTekn0logy Member Posts: 113 ■■■■□□□□□□
    Are the VMs going to be used for daily or production workloads? How big are the VMs? If just for dev/test labbing, I think that 32GB is plenty since you wont set the server up to run all of the VMs at the same time. Test Microsoft VMs can live with 1 core and 1GB of RAM.
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    Tekn0logyTekn0logy Member Posts: 113 ■■■■□□□□□□
    Are the VMs going to be used for daily or production workloads? How big are the VMs? If just for dev/test labbing, I think that 32GB is plenty since you wont set the server up to run all of the VMs at the same time. Test Microsoft VMs can live with 1 core and 1GB of RAM.
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