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Building a home lab

cgrimaldocgrimaldo Member Posts: 439 ■■■■□□□□□□
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Has anyone ever thought of taking advantage of some of the deals like this at tigerdirect.com?

IBM ThinkCentre M52 8215 Desktop PC - Intel Pentium 4 3GHz, 1GB DDR2, 80GB HDD, DVD-ROM, Windows XP Home (Off-Lease) at TigerDirect.com

I would like to get a few machines for a home lab. It is for nothing specific right now. I would just like to maybe run a VM one machine, maybe test a piece software on another. I have my current desktop for everyday use and just picked up a new laptop last fall for school.

So I am looking for cheaper machines that would only see use for labs. Your thoughts on machines like the one listed above?

Thanks guys
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    RobertKaucherRobertKaucher Member Posts: 4,299 ■■■■■■■■■■
    If you buy a few of these you will end up spending around $650. Why not just spend a little more and get a good Systemax server with a decent amount of RAM and run ESXi?

    I'm not sure what sort of experience you have, but this would give you some hands on with server hardware and virtualization.
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    Hyper-MeHyper-Me Banned Posts: 2,059
    I got an inspiron 580 with a 3.4Ghz Core i5, 8 GB DDR3, 1TB HDD for 400$ from Dell Outlet after a 15% off coupon (which they run pretty frequently)

    Its plenty powerful enough to run Hyper-V or run Windows 7 with VMware Workstation on top. It didn't like ESX's stringent hardware detection, though.
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    cgrimaldocgrimaldo Member Posts: 439 ■■■■□□□□□□
    RobertKaucher wrote: »
    If you buy a few of these you will end up spending around $650. Why not just spend a little more and get a good Systemax server with a decent amount of RAM and run ESXi?

    I'm not sure what sort of experience you have, but this would give you some hands on with server hardware and virtualization.


    That's a great idea. I just liked the idea of having different boxes as well. I intended on having some more heavy duty machines like you listed but also some machines like the one I listed for that reason. I appreciate your input.
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    RobertKaucherRobertKaucher Member Posts: 4,299 ■■■■■■■■■■
    cgrimaldo wrote: »
    That's a great idea. I just liked the idea of having different boxes as well. I intended on having some more heavy duty machines like you listed but also some machines like the one I listed for that reason. I appreciate your input.

    Also consider your energy bill.
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    DevilWAHDevilWAH Member Posts: 2,997 ■■■■■■■■□□
    RobertKaucher wrote: »
    Also consider your energy bill.

    This is why you ask work ever so nicely if you can had a small rack in the corner of the server room. Then get a remote connection in

    :)
    • If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. Albert Einstein
    • An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backward. So when life is dragging you back with difficulties. It means that its going to launch you into something great. So just focus and keep aiming.
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