Recommended budget CPU for ESXi home lab?

[itmv2]

I want to set up an ESXi home lab to run a couple of Windows and/or Ubuntu VMs. Budget is up to £200 for the CPU. Can anyone recommend a decent CPU within that budget which will work well with ESXi? Would a Ryzen 2700X be a good choice, or would something with on board GPU be a better choice?

[Alex_Romeo]

Hi,

As advice I tell you, the first thing you need to know is which version of ESXi you want to install in your Lab, then you have to check which hardware is compatible with that version, and finally you can search it on eBay among the disused servers in the "Servers Farm ", I did this and paid much less. You could also stay in your £200

ARomeo

[itmv2]

I run ESXi v6.5.0.

Pardon my ignorance but what is the "Servers Farm"?

[itmv2]

I did check the VMware compatbility list for ESXi 6.5 and it came up with no results when I selected AMD under "partner name"

???

[Alex_Romeo]

No problem, "Server Farms" are those structures that provide hostind services to users, e.g. Aruba, etc ...

These companies often change servers with other newer models and put them up for sale at much lower prices.

You can find them on eBay.

ARomeo

[itmv2]

Ah I see. Is there any good way of finding those sorts of sellers on eBay?

[Alex_Romeo]

no, do a simple search and then search through the results. You can also find refurbished ones at a good price.

[varchitectpro]

itmv2​,

I would say Ryzen family CPU is a good value for money and a good choice if you a need a quiet home lab and require less than 64 GB of RAM. Thats more than enough RAM for a couple of VMs

You can get a graphics card simillar to builtin for less then 30-50 pounds.

If you need more RAM than 64 GB and are willing to put up with the noice, then as suggested there are good used rack servers deals on ebay.

PS Personally I have 2600 Ryzen with 64 GB, running ESXi 6.7 without any problems.

[itmv2]

I think I'll need 32GB RAM at the most I usually only have 2 running at a time, each using 8GB.

Are there any issues booting ESXi if there are no on-board graphics - i.e. will the auxiliary graphics adapter be detected by ESXi during the boot process so that startup can be monitored?

[varchitectpro]

itmv2​,

maybe graphics output is a little bit delayed at startup.  Other from that, no issues.

Lot of people are using these CPUs and additional graphics card just as an ordianary desktop without any problems,  there is no ESXi specifics in that.

[itmv2]

When you say graphics output is a bit delayed at startup - that doesn't mean waiting for the guest O/S to boot before the graphics adapter driver is recognised?

[varchitectpro]

No, It is not connected to guest O/S start up.

The guest O/S  will not use the graphics card unless you passthrough it to VM (and you  use a supported card)

[Scott Reeve]

I am running esxi 7.0 on an AMD FX-4350 - no issues at all.

I'm looking to build another server.  Anyone know if any of the Ryzen CPUs will run esxi 7.0?

Considering this:

AMD Ryzen 3 3200G 4-Core 3.6GHz

[althafphussain]

you may use your laptop (16GB 4 logical CPU with L4 cache) as baremetal. also you could go hypervisor on nested VM.