Homelab

Update on Homelab

I decided to get started with a Intel NUC Skull Canyon so I can put VMware ESXi And Nutanix Community Edition on it.

I purchased the following

Intel NUC Skull Canyon
Crucial 32GB Kit (16GB x 2) DDR4 2133 MT/s
Samsung 960 Evo M.2 250GB NVMe
Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB NVMe
Sandisk Ultra Fit USB 3.0

Still waiting on it all arriving but I’ll put together a post on assembling when I get everything.

Research

I used to have a homelab with a couple of 2012 Apple Mac Minis, a Synology storage unit and Cisco SG300-10 switch. Most of the kit was sold as part of the move and all I have left is the Cisco switch. Currently I am trying to decide between the Supermicro E200/300-8d and the Intel NUC Skull Canyon unit.

The Supermicro servers would give me a better system with more upgrade options. The capability of 128GB of RAM and 10GbE connections are a particular highlight for me.

The Intel NUC would be a cheaper option and quicker to get up and running as the Supermicro servers seem limited in number currently here in Canada (upgrade coming?)

I have been using a few excellent resources to help me decide what would be the best setup. I’ll list down below useful links as I find them.

Looks like new Intel NUC models are incoming according to this blog post. New CPU, Intel Optane ready and 2 x 1GB NICs being the biggest changes it seems. We will see what the official announcement brings.