loweandr
New Member
Hello All,
I am in the middle of a technical decision that I cant seem to find my own answer to. Roughly 2 months ago I had the urge to start a small home lab for learning purposes. My original thought was to run an ESXi host with various windows/linux virtual machines to learn about domains, user administration, device administration, but mostly a focus on web hosting, NAS, security, and networking. After some decisions on the hardware I was looking to buy a Lenovo TS140 that I could expand as necessary as my needs grew. But now my main concern has transitioned to power consumption. I know the TS140 doesnt use a tremendous amount of power, but for something that I will want to run 24/7 I am looking to minimize the power usage as much as possible. So now I have transitioned into looking at the intel atom embedded processor motherboards. With the processors having a total design power of 20 watts, adding a couple 2.5" SSDs I could have a very low power server. My only concern with that is if it will be able to handle a handfull (3-5) of virtual machines. I know the performance would not be spectacular, but for my learning purposes I am thinking it will be fine. I felt that once I get a good handle on some key technologies, I could run a small website for mostly static content and a NAS. So now that I am looking into such low power equipment, I was thinking of running a couple raspberry PIs instead of the virtual host with virtual machines. The servers I was looking at would be roughly between $500 - $1000, and the raspberry pis would be roughly $50 each with case, sd card, power supply etc.
So the question, Would I be better off looking for a low power virtual host or run a few raspberry PIs.
I am in the middle of a technical decision that I cant seem to find my own answer to. Roughly 2 months ago I had the urge to start a small home lab for learning purposes. My original thought was to run an ESXi host with various windows/linux virtual machines to learn about domains, user administration, device administration, but mostly a focus on web hosting, NAS, security, and networking. After some decisions on the hardware I was looking to buy a Lenovo TS140 that I could expand as necessary as my needs grew. But now my main concern has transitioned to power consumption. I know the TS140 doesnt use a tremendous amount of power, but for something that I will want to run 24/7 I am looking to minimize the power usage as much as possible. So now I have transitioned into looking at the intel atom embedded processor motherboards. With the processors having a total design power of 20 watts, adding a couple 2.5" SSDs I could have a very low power server. My only concern with that is if it will be able to handle a handfull (3-5) of virtual machines. I know the performance would not be spectacular, but for my learning purposes I am thinking it will be fine. I felt that once I get a good handle on some key technologies, I could run a small website for mostly static content and a NAS. So now that I am looking into such low power equipment, I was thinking of running a couple raspberry PIs instead of the virtual host with virtual machines. The servers I was looking at would be roughly between $500 - $1000, and the raspberry pis would be roughly $50 each with case, sd card, power supply etc.
So the question, Would I be better off looking for a low power virtual host or run a few raspberry PIs.
