Hardware for esxi 5.5-6.7

[rondebbs]

First of all I want to apologize for my ignorance as I am new to VMware.  I got access to an old dell Poweredge 1950  server for my home lab.  Without checking the compatibility list I tried to  install esxi 6.7 from usb using Rufus.  Part way through it gagged with an error about the Intel Xeon E540 2.33 GHZ processors not compatible.  I  checked the list and  saw this server was  compatible with 5.5 but no  further.  So I downloaded and created  the  5.5  image  on  usb and  everything installed fine.  It was a little difficult to find the 5.5 client which made me start  wondering.  I'm setting up a lab environment to test out some simulators (storage) from Netapp, EMC etc.  Just basically to get familiar with management of different diskarrays etc.  I'm hoping all the  simulators will run on the  older 5.5.

But this rackable server sitting in my spare  room sounds  like  a jet  engine and it is extremely heavy and takes  a ton of floor space and will probably never run the newer VMware  versions.   Just wondering if anyone knows  of  a  good affordable workstation (vendor and model) or small server (used, ebay or something) that would run esxi 6.7.  I need 32+ GB of ram but don't need much compute power or disk  space as this is just for my small  home lab.  I'm hoping someone has  gotten  esxi  6.7 running on one of these smaller boxes and can share some info.  While I'm at  it I'll probably want to install and learn vserver as  well.  Thanks.

[daphnissov]

My recommendation would be to look for a 12th Gen Dell server on eBay as these can come fairly cheap. If you don't need much more RAM than 32, don't need beefy CPUs, and don't need internal storage, you could probably get one for a song.

While I'm at  it I'll probably want to install and learn vserver as  well.

I don't know what "vserver" is.

[rondebbs]

ooops I should have said vcenter.   I saw somewhere a guy was running esxi 6.x on the Dell workstation below.  There around $300 on ebay and would seem to  work for a home lab.  I  would just hate to buy it, receive it, set it up and then find it would  not  run 6.x.  Wondering if someone would know if the T5500 Workstation would work?  Or some similar setup.

Dell Precision T5500 Workstation 1x Six Core X5680 3.33GHz 24GB RAM

[Dave_the_Wave]

Dell Precision desktops were basically made with server-grade mainboards, and that particular one should work fine with 6.x .

"Jet engine" servers are a symptom of "thermal runaway" issues that come from the server's inability to properly diagnose from temp sensors any longer, so as a failsafe all the cooling fans run 100% to protect itself. Basically there is some sort of defect with the server, and many from "ebay" fit this category.

[rondebbs]

Thanks for info.  Below is an example of one of the VSAs that I need to run just to demo the environment.  Below on "System disks"  it says 250GB root disk and 10GB vNVRAM.  I am a newbie, can someone explain the 10GB nVRAM?  Would the Dell T5500 support this? Also would the Dell T5500 workstation be able to to run the 4TB config below?  The other VSAs that I need to run are similar to this with somewhat different requirements.

Virtual Hardware	DD VE configuration
	4TB	8TB	16TB	32TB	48TB	64TB	96TB
vCPU	2	2	4	4	4	8	8
Memory Size	6GB	8GB	16GB	24GB	36GB	48GB	64GB
CPU	At least 1.5GHz per core
System disks	One 250 GB root disk and 10 GB vNVRAM disk
vNVRAM simulation file size	512MB	512 MB	512 MB	1 GB	1 GB	1 GB	2GB
	Configurations with DD Cloud Tier support has the same vNVRAM size as the corresponding ones without DD Cloud Tier
Network Card	Up to 8 Network Adapters
SCSI controller	For Hyper-V and ESX: Up to 4 SCSI controllers For KVM: Virtio SCSI