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Seeking Advice for Setting Up My First Home Lab - Considering a Dell R730xd (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by buzzmcg@alien.top to c/homelab@selfhosted.forum

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After a 14 year hiatus from IT, I've decided to dive back into the field and am in the process of setting up my first home lab. My goal is to transition into an IT career, and I feel that hands on experience with a home lab would be immensely beneficial.

I have some experience from the past, I still own a Cisco lab from my CCNA practice days. Now I'm looking to expand my setup by adding a server that can host VMs and allow me to experiment with different environments such as Active Directory.

I've come across a Dell R730xd server being sold for £300 and I'm considering purchasing it. However, I'm not sure if it's still a relevant model for my needs and if it can run ESXi efficiently. Here are the specs:

Model: Dell PowerEdge R730xd
CPU: 2x Xeon® E5-2683v3 (35M Cache, 2.00 GHz, 14-CORE, 9.6 GT/s, Total 28-CORE)
Memory: 128GB DDR4 (upgradable to 512GB or 768GB)
Storage: 8x900GB 2.5" SAS 10K Disks
Raid Controller: PERC H730 (12GBps, 1GB NV Cache, RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60)
Power Supply: 2 x 750 Platinum
Networking: Dell 4-Port Gigabit Ethernet NIC, iDRAC8 with Enterprise License

Given these specifications, I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether this server is a good fit for my intended use. Is it overkill, or perhaps not sufficient? Any advice on whether this is a good deal and if it will suit my needs for learning and experimentation would be greatly appreciated.

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[–] sysblob@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

The benefit of buying an R730 (I own two) is if you've literally never laid hands on a server before. You'll learn things you didn't know existed coming from the consumer world like management NICs, iDRAC, raid controllers, redundant power supplies, racks and rails, ECC memory, internal flash storage, etc. That is the value of purchasing a server.

Having said that, if you already know most of that stuff, absolutely do not buy an R730. They're loud even with fans ramped down, they're power hogs, they have a huge server depth so the space they take up is insane, and they're crazy heavy and produce heat. There really is no advantage over a more modern desktop machine which you could still run ESXi on fine as long as you pick one with an intel NIC that's compatible.