Home Lab Setup: My Experience with Intel NUC
As a professional in the IT industry, I need a home lab to learn, test, and develop solutions on. My requirements are straightforward: a simple vSphere setup with vRA, vRO, and a Windows Domain Controller providing Active Directory, DNS, and DHCP. After experimenting with various options, I decided to go with an Intel NUC. In this article, I’ll share my experience with the Intel NUC and how it meets my home lab needs.
Why I Chose Intel NUC
I considered a few options, including HP rack servers/tower servers on eBay, but I was looking for something standalone, cost-effective, and with minimal space requirements. The Intel NUC fit the bill perfectly. It’s a compact, powerful device that can run vSphere and other virtualization tools seamlessly.
My Setup
I opted for a single Intel NUC8I5BEH, which comes with a quad-core 8th generation Intel Core i5 Processor. It has a single M.2 slot, 4 USB 3.1 ports, a Thunderbolt port, and a Gigabit LAN port. The NUC supports up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM, but I installed 2 x Crucial DDR4 32GB Dimms, giving me 64GB of RAM. For storage, I purchased a Western Digital 3D NAND SSD and installed it as the primary drive. I also have a spare 2.5″ SSD lying around that I installed as well, giving me nearly a terabyte of usable space.
ESXi 6.7, the latest build at the time of writing, runs smoothly on the NUC. The internal disks were discovered without any fiddling, so they both got formatted into VMFS volumes for the host to use. I created a couple of portgroups and sorted out my networking (basic, flat networking on a standard vSwitch, separate routable network to the rest of my house). Then it was on to deploying some VMs and getting things going.
Performance and Resources
The NUC has plenty of resources to handle my home lab needs. With all the virtual machines powered on and while using vRA to deploy a VM from a template, I still have enough free resources that the NUC isn’t suffering or starved. The NUC’s resources are sufficient for my needs, and it handles everything smoothly.
My home lab setup consists of:
* ESXi 6.7 (latest build at time of writing)
* vRealize Automation (vRA)
* vRealize Orchestrator (vRO)
* Windows Domain Controller providing Active Directory, DNS, and DHCP
All the virtual machines run smoothly, and I have plenty of resources left over for future expansion. The NUC has nearly a terabyte of usable space, thanks to the two internal storage devices.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Intel NUC is an excellent choice for a home lab setup. It’s compact, powerful, and cost-effective. With plenty of resources available, it handles my vSphere and virtualization needs seamlessly. If you’re looking for a similar setup, I highly recommend considering the Intel NUC.