Home Virtual Servers Approachs.

[BigPanda]

Hello Neowin,

I have purchased an used Lenovo Ts440 - E3-1245 - 32gb Ram and I am still trying to figure out the best approach to use it as a Virtualization Server.

My goal is to actually run VMs on the server ranging from:

• CentOS 7+, Ubuntu 20.04+, Windows Server 2019+ Essentials or Standard and some on demand OS such as Windows 10 Pro to do remote desktop and work on specific stuff.

I was looking at both Hyper-V & Vmware Esxi (Free version) to run as the main OS and I was wondering if some of you have comments, suggestions about this approach.

Right now, I am using a small 2bay NAS for NFS, dedicated i3 SSF PC for my Web Development stack and EasyBCD on my workstation for multiboot VHDX OS images.

Sadly the EasyBCD approach still left all my HDD visibles to all OS and can't run them on background.

 

Thank you for your help

[farmeunit]

I personally like VMWare better, but either will get the job done.  You get a little better OS selection support from VMWare, I believe, or it used to be that way.  You might look at ProxMox, though, as well.  Lawrence Systems has some good videos on it, as well as others.  

[BigPanda]

Thank you for the reply.

 

I am a little bit scared with Hyper-V since I have some issues installing Linux distribution on my workstation. I guess the best solution would be to just install ESXi and test it.

[Sikh]

Dont bother using VMWare ESXi for home use. They keep restricting it more. When I upgraded to 6, they started limiting physical CPUs AND Cores so my 8core 16thread system was locked to 4cores 8threads and it wasnt on 5.x.

Use Proxmox instead. Since youll be running linux, I assume you arent afraid to get a little dirty / dont need a UI to fix everything.  This is not to say Proxmox isnt solid, it very much is. But weird things can happen and its nice to know how to troubleshoot / fix them instead of needing to call support.

I have been running Proxmox for years now on 3 different hosts and its been way more rock solid and doesnt come with a bunch of payware (paying to have the ability to backup) ######. 

[heyitsheather]

I run Proxmox in my home lab on an older Dell workstation. I find it very easy to use, and if you're already even a little bit familiar with Linux, it should be pretty easy to pick up.

[Sulphy]

Never heard of Proxmox before... looks pretty cool! Bit overkill for my home lab, as i currently use Virtualbox that does everything i need it to ... 

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

I've run VMware ESXi on my home server with a free licence for many years, its been rock solid. That said I can't go past version 6.7 as my hardware is no longer supported, older drivers you could integrate back in are not supported on ESXi 7.0 or later. (My hardware is pretty old at this point to be fair, however still does the job.)

Broadcom are acquiring VMware which has caused a lot of concern for SMB / home lab users, it speculated Broadcom are only really bothered about the large enterprise customers. So how usable it will be in the future (at no cost / an affordable cost home home is up for debate).

If I was starting again today I'd be tempted to look at Proxmox, you get a lot more functionality at no cost and a much larger array of hardware is supported. ESXi is still usable at the time of posting anyway, providing your hardware is supported.

[Sikh]

On 10/09/2023 at 03:35, InsaneNutter said:

...

Broadcom are acquiring VMware which has caused a lot of concern for SMB / home lab users, it speculated Broadcom are only really bothered about the large enterprise customers. So how usable it will be in the future (at no cost / an affordable cost home home is up for debate).

...

Woah Broadcom are acquiring VMWare!? I didnt think it was possible for VMWare to be acquired because of how large they are and for how long they have been in the industry but seeing Broadcom is acquiring them makes sense.

I know a decent amount about Broadcom and I really hope they leave the free users alone / give us back some of the stuff we use to have (no limit on CPU Cores, etc) and thats it. 

But even if they return ESXI to what use to be its glory days (ESXi 4 to 5.5), I will be staying with Proxmox. I have it running on 3 hosts that are "in production" in my homelab with a combined 16 cores / 32 threads with 96gbs of RAM and my lab has never been more stable. I have daily backups of the important servers/vms and weekly backups of all of the VMs without any issues and I didnt have to pay for it

On 10/09/2023 at 02:16, Sulphy said:

Never heard of Proxmox before... looks pretty cool! Bit overkill for my home lab, as i currently use Virtualbox that does everything i need it to ... 

If you have a server thats headless, Proxmox is it. If you have a single machine / desktop that you use as a server, it makes sense to use virtualbox. 

I love VB but I only use it on my laptops / desktops. If I have a machine dedicated to being a server, its always headless and its dedicated to being a server. 

[heyitsheather]

On 10/09/2023 at 03:16, Sulphy said:

Never heard of Proxmox before... looks pretty cool! Bit overkill for my home lab, as i currently use Virtualbox that does everything i need it to ... 

I use Proxmox as like VMWare it's a type 1 hypervisor so you get near bare metal performance and PCI passthrough. Virtualbox is a type 2 hypervisor so it's not so bare metal as there is a host OS in the middle. Last I knew with VirtualBox, it does not support PCI passthrough, though I'm not using that feature at the moment. In the past I have used it for direct NIC assignment to a VM.

[BigPanda]

Thank you everyone, I will try Proxmox 1st and if it does not work, I'll go with VMware ESXi.

Your input are very appeciated.