Hyper V Lab environment

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t0ny

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# 198915 27-Jul-2016 23:22

Looking at building a hyper v lab environment with at least 64gb of ram and 512 gb of ssd drive. I already have power supply and case so need to factor in cpu and motherboard. With a budget of 1400, can this be done? Must be able to handle at least 8 vm's

ubergeeknz

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Vocus

# 1599904 27-Jul-2016 23:53

It'll be tight but yes, I think it's possible for a barebones "lab" machine. $1800 might be closer to the mark (if you want mirrored disks anyway, which is a good idea). Assuming you already have the software license sorted.

mentalinc

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# 1599955 28-Jul-2016 06:31

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder+homelab+HomeServer

Do you want brand new?

Do you want server grade parts?

Where did the 64GB requirement come from?

CPU: Intel 3770k| RAM: F3-2400C10D-16GTX G.Skill Trident X |MB: Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H-WB | GFX: GV-N660OC-2GD gv-n660oc-2gd GeForce GTX 660 | Monitor: Qnix 27" 2560x1440

t0ny

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# 1599962 28-Jul-2016 07:03

Brand new would be nice. At least there will be some assurance of reliability
Not really required. Its a home lab so power consumption needs to be factored in
VM's take more ram then cpu. The more the merrier :)

davidcole

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# 1600013 28-Jul-2016 09:11

I run about 4 - 5 VMs in a hyper v enviroment. (2x linux, 2xwindows 10 and 2xW2k8 - ok 6 vms then now that I count it.

I use 32gb ram and it sits at about 87% used. (AMD A10 APU).

Custom case, with 1 500GB ssd for OS and a couple of the more important VMs. And 7 spinning rust hard drives.

Previously known as psycik

OpenHAB: Gigabyte AMD A8 Brix, OpenHAB with Aeotech ZWave Controller, Raspberry PI, Wemos D1 Mini, Zwave, Xiaomi Humidity and Temperature sensors and Bluetooth LE Sensors
Media:Chromecast v2, ATV4, Roku3, HDHomeRun Dual
Windows 10 Host (Plex Server/Crashplan): 2x2TB, 2x3TB, 1x4TB using DriveBender, Samsung 850 evo 512 GB SSD, Hyper-V Server with 1xW10, 1xW2k8, 2xUbuntu 16.04 LTS, Crashplan, NextPVR channel for Plex ,NextPVR Metadata Agent and Scanner for Plex

timbosan

1566 posts

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# 1600017 28-Jul-2016 09:18

If you want 64GB or more, you either need an X79 or X99 board (so a LGA2011 socket system) or go to enterprise hardware. I run my VM's on a AMD3 system with 32GB RAM and that gives me:

* SBS2011
* Windows 7
* SQL Server
* TimeMachine Server

It MAY (and I mean MAY) be better to have 2 systems with a standard m-ATX board and have 32GB per system, then you have at least some redundancy, and moving VM's between hosts with Hyper-V is easy. This is the way I am going as actually works out cheaper (AM3 boards can be < $100, a X99 board will be at least 5 times that).

BTW are you going with Hyper-V core, or the Hyper-V role on 2012R2? That affects licensing.

(Edit - fixed typo)

t0ny

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# 1600023 28-Jul-2016 09:25

Slowly narrowing down on the components. The B150 motherboards can do 64 gigs of ram. I like the Gigabyte GA-B150-HD3P but cannot find anyone selling that in NZ. The second best option is the Asus B150 Pro but is a higher cost. For CPU, iam leaning towards the I5-6500 or I5-6600. Licensing is not an issue, i have an active MSDN subscription

engedib

160 posts

Master Geek

# 1600029 28-Jul-2016 09:35

Check this out:

http://www.expta.com/2016/06/intel-nucs-another-take-on-expta-home.html

t0ny

284 posts

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# 1600034 28-Jul-2016 09:47

damn...that is one sexy kit. Unfortunatly i would be blowing my budget with a spec like this:

Edit..they take SODIMM's so cost may be slightly more

mentalinc

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# 1600300 28-Jul-2016 18:00

thats also $600 above your budget and only 32Gb of RAM...

CPU: Intel 3770k| RAM: F3-2400C10D-16GTX G.Skill Trident X |MB: Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H-WB | GFX: GV-N660OC-2GD gv-n660oc-2gd GeForce GTX 660 | Monitor: Qnix 27" 2560x1440

TwoSeven

1382 posts

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# 1600320 28-Jul-2016 19:11

You dont need much to have a lab machine. But it does depend on what you are running on the VMs.

I typically use a standard VM image with 60gb of disk and 4gb of memory. I only use an SSD for my dev machines host OS, for VMs I use a standard SATA disk as once they are running, I/O for me isnt an issue so one sata channel is ok. My dev rig has 32gb in it and I will usually run 4 vms.

I am not sure of the need for redundency, since the purpose of a lab machine is for vm creation and teardown to be automated

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t0ny

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# 1600504 29-Jul-2016 08:15

I ended up with the NUC, spec'd with 512 Gb of M.2 disk space and 32 gigs of ram. Yes, blew my budget completely and may have to sell couple of my toys to recover that cost but i have a powerful lab environment which i can chuck in my back pack and take anywhere

TwoSeven

1382 posts

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# 1600937 29-Jul-2016 17:13

Intake it when you mean lab machine, you just meant a machine running VMs and not the Hosted Labs which is part of System Center Configuration Manager and Microsoft Visua studio.

Software Engineer