Refurbished T5500 for Virtualization Lab

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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Tekn0logy

eBay is your friend: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Precision-T5600-16-Core-2-20GHz-E5-2660-16GB-RAM-2x-500GB-HDD/182388025949?hash=item2a772c6a5d:g:qH8AAOSwBmJcuGvn:sc:UPSGround!08054!US!-1

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.

jah8887

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?

Tekn0logy

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

jah8887

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.

Tekn0logy

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.

Tekn0logy