Source
r/homelab•
GTFShadow

Server for at home use and learning

Help

So I am looking for help, suggestions and some guidance here. I have been in IT for about 7 years now. I started as a level 1 help desk for 3 yeasr, a year of doing field tech work(running cable, networking), desktop support for a year and at my current position which is labeled a IT Systems Administrator. Right now I do anything from desktop support, phone system, networking and server related tasks.

What I am looking to do is work my way up to a MCSE. I want to setup a server at home to do some at home training and various things. But I am at a point a of not know what to do and or were to go. What recommendations would you have for a home server to work on? All of our servers are virtualized using VMWare so I would like to work with this as well. What do you recommend I use the server to practice with? I don't have a budget as of it yet, but I am not looking to break the bank either for this.

Any and all suggestions will be helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions for me as well. If you believe this belongs in a different sub I can move this too. Thanks!

Posted Sep 20, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

19
flux103•

I would start with any old hardware you have lying around. Once you outgrow that decide if you want enterprise rackmount hardware or quiet tower hardware like a TS140 or T20. The poweredge R710 and R610 are a great starting point but may be alot more than you need for now, especially if you have some old hardware lying around.

3
AeroSteveO•

even with a only a few GB of RAM, you can start building a virtual network. My server started with 8GB RAM running 3 VMs and the host OS and had plenty to spare.

2
GTFShadowOP•

Thanks for the reply! I have some old hardware laying around, but not sure most of it works anymore. I just finally built a new skylake build last November after using AMD phenom ii x4 955 build for over 5+ years. I think I will check out some of the suggestions you gave me, looks like some good starting points!

1
dxm765ESXi | FreeNAS | HP •

eBay will quickly become your best friend, starter servers can be found for 300-500$ USD such as this one includes everything you need, plenty of RAM, processing power, and harddrives for a starter RAID array and all.

2
datdamnchickenSuperMicro Hoarder•

eBay is great and plenty of choices, but dont overlook other lesser know sites.

I managed to score a Supermicro server for $5 from a local auction site. Most of the guys there are after tools and guns, so this was of no interest to them.

2
GTFShadowOP•

Thank you for the suggestion, I will look into these and models that are similar.

1
ilovechips_•

I am a 21-year-old IT tech currently working as T1, with some occasional T2-type stuff thrown in due to my willingless to play around and learn (and being at a small MSP helps). I also pulled the trigger and decided to buy myself a home server to further my knowledge and I couldn't be happier. I'd say get a Dell R710 (3.5" for more storage, 2.5" for more speed - generally speaking) from Ebay, prices are crazy cheap. I got my server for ~$400 including shipping, and the best part is that the R710 will be more than sufficient to get you started. We also have a lot of clients with virtualized servers so setting up ESXi and a bunch of VMs is great experience. I currently have:

  • CentOS running Guacamole
  • Win2012 domain controller/file server, also with DNS + DHCP
  • Ubuntu running OpenVPN
  • Ubuntu running Pihole
  • Windows 7 running Plex

I mixed the OS's for a bit of extra knowledge. Beyond learning via messing around, I highly recommend CBT Nuggets. Have fun

2
GTFShadowOP•

Good stuff! I will have to check this out option out for sure. I know I wanted to setup a Plex server, do some Ad/File server/DNS as well since I deal with some of this currently (want to expand my knowledge) and work on some different platforms of linux.

1
ilovechips_•

R710 w/ ESXi sounds perfect

1