I want to build a budget server for virtualization and NAS

Networking Networking Hardware
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I am a newbie in this field , I want to try out different things and learn using the same , hence i am looking for a budget build or a pre built server for virtulization and network attached storage , so can i get some suggestions for the same .

My budget is around $1000 to $1500.

Thank You

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Ryzen will probably be best bet. You wanting VMware or KVM?
What all do you want to have this server do?
VMs, Containers, NAS?
I personally like my NAS to be a separate machine and then hypervisor it’s own machine. ISCI connection between the two so VMs and such are on a sound redundant array.

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I wanted to go with VMware .

Thank you for your response

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Im assuming that means you have a license for it. ?

I would start with ryzen. You wont need much in terms of a video card so tbch save on alot of the other components. I havent looked into TR much so I will do that before I make any commentary on whether that is a real possibility or not

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He/She could always use the free version of ESXi if the use case isn’t for anything too demanding, and doesn’t need any advanced features.

If your going down the used pre-built servers I would avoid anything older than xeon 56XX (eg Dell r710), vmware have started to remove support for older CPUs in newer versions of esx (I would even avoid 56xx because it next). Recommend you pay attention to what’s on the compatibility list…

I would also recommend separate machines for your NAS, and Hypervisor.

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Besides the NAS, what other VMs or Containers are you planning on running on the box? Knowing exactly what you’ll be wanting to run will determine what kind of hardware requirements you’ll need

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Thank You
Will look into all the aspects .

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Can’t go wrong with SuperMicro server. Pick a used one on eBay, stick it in a corner, and fill that bad boy with drives. You get enterprise hardware for features like ECC and IPMI, as well as cheap older parts. Using something like Debian with OpenMediaVault and Proxmox on top gets you virtualisation and NAS options in one box, natively. Something like this with a stack of 2TB drives in ZFS likely will run under $1k.

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LabGopher is an E-bay scraper for old used server hardware. Very useful if that is the route you’d like to go

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thank you for the suggestion

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This is fantastic! Thank you very much!