lol yeah I tend to over think things initially, the only good aspect if I am usually content for a while… until the next plan.
I would rather future proof this server as it will likely remain in the house after my wife kicks me and my office out, banished to the man shed.
Networking is something I have plenty of time to think about, probably by the time I get round to doing the proper network wiring 10gb/s will be affordable and still over the top lol
Definitely agree… proxmox is not one I’d be comfortable with recommending, esxi, xcpng, or even hyper v are all much better alternatives imo with much larger community groups for when stuff goes wrong or u need help… just my 2 cents…
I guess the only drawback or positive is (depending on price vs reliability), using esxi or xcpng to are more restricted to server grade hardware, and that costs a pretty penny, but also is more reliable.
Back to the drawing board @JacobJohnson lol, rather not spend more than 3k AUD for the system, might almost be worth going refurbished server hardware.
I don’t know what availability you have over there but there is a shit ton of it here in the States and I bought a fully loaded HP Proliant DL380 Gen 7 with 72gigs ram, dual 12 core Intels and 8 128g 2.5 SAS drives and dual power supplies for $380. Super clean machine and a quarter of the price of my main rig (admittedly that was 10 years ago but you get the idea 
So server hardware isn’t all that unaffordable. I have Proxmox on mine and I haven’t taken any time to play with it and actually add VM’s yet.
I have used several desktops for esxi without any problems… not even good ones to be honest… pretty much anything that’s dual core or better and has VT enabled in bios can do it!! I litterally have a bottom of the barrel core 2 duo laptop as my “portable” esxi host… sounds like u need to re educate yourself on homelab virtualization tech in general and not be rude when ppl who have years of experience try to save u alot of potential grief and headaches!!! rant over
@JacobJohnson I think you misunderstood what @DavidRK was saying. I don’t believe he intended to be rude at all. He was saying that your advice has made him decide to start over with his ideas on what he was going to do (which is what I was getting to with mocking his thinking that he had a concrete plan 
. Maybe his understanding of esxi or xcpng is incorrect in that it should be run on server grade gear but I don’t believe he was trying to dispute your knowledge and experience. That’s my take on it all. Sorry if it was unsolicited.
@JacobJohnson sorry for the misunderstanding, your experience has made me rethink my decisions (I was mocking myself, and my lack of experience in this domain).
I just poorly worded the sentence, must be my dyslexia shining through.
The little research I have done has indicated that there can be issues with LAN and SATA device compatibility, but I guess if I find out what motherboards works I shouldn’t have a problem.
esxi definitely seems to be a solid system, and I will aim to go in this direction.
I appreciate your expertise Jacob as mine is extremely limited in this area.
I haven’t ran into sata issues but if u need an image with common realtek drivers pre loaded let me know & I’ll figure out where to post my custom iso with almost all of the legacy drivers including onboard realtek drivers rolled up into a 6.7 image…
I apologize for being grumpy earlier… litterally was trying to re convert vm images from my buddys broken proxmox (no backups) to an esxi host with much struggle and frustration at the time I was typing that if u couldn’t tell… lmfao
I’ve been stocking up on Dell EOL servers… poweredge 1950s & 2950s can be had for $50 here in the US on Ebay & craigslist… if u have $200-300 Dell r610’s & 710’s can also be had and have officiall esxi images available free from Dell support… hp proliants are also a good choice… my 1950’s are running dual 3ghz quad core xeons and 32 gig or ram for under $100…
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I was just looking at them, super cheap.
How much ram do you usually allow per core on a VM, I currently have about 4GB per core with Hyper-V and it seems pretty good for most Linux distro’s. nothing I run is to ram heavy but who knows what the future brings lol.
It totally depends on the vm… I have lots of linux “headless” vm’s that are as low as 512mb-1gb, for windows (7-10) vm’s 2-4 gig of ram is usually more than plenty… see what your actual usage is and adjust accordingly… you can always change the ram size afterwards to tweak it up or down… just make sure ur vm is shutdown first or it will crash… my openhab2 is on a headless debian install running webmin package for remote config file access, 1 gig ram 2 cores of cpu… works flawlessly… things like my mosquitto vm only have 1 core and 512mb of ram because they dont need more than that…
@JacobJohnson after much thinking and contemplating I ended up taking your advice and have a used DELL Poweredge 620 on its way.
I will soon have 16cores and 32gb of ram to play with, lots of fun things planned.
Ended up being cheaper than a new desktop setup and I will have more compute power and known compatibility with ESXi, non of the guess work and workarounds I would likely face with the desktop variety.
@DavidRK Nice!! They are excellent servers for the cost… the iDrac is also an awesome remote power cycle/management/monitoring tool if u have remote access back to your house (ie I use an encrypted openVPN tunnel from mobile device to pfsense) It’s also super handy for host reboots while ur not physically around to push buttons… I have 1 short rack with 3 servers that lives 5 hours away, 2 states over, that holds my “off-site backups” I can 100% manage all 3 without ever having to even call my uncle provided the internet is working @ both ends…
Also, the sliding rack rails are amazingly easy to work with compared to most of the others ive came across… U can litterally slide out the server with it still connected (powered down of course) and make ram/processor upgrades without unplugging the wires & ever even taking it off the rack… good servers are addictive!!! I got my first actual real rack server, a Dell PE1950, 5-6 years ago? (I have 9x 1950’s now), and the 610’s and 710s are starting to multiply around here quickly also… long story short, ur gunna love it!!!
Well, I thought I would drop an update.
The Dell R620 is turning out to be a beast, once I got the general idea of how ESXi is setup and to get HDD/SSDs to register it seems pretty quick.
I just have a drive with all the ISOs and VNC software on and then it seems pretty quick to spin up a VM.
Couple things I wasn’t sure of and wanted to see if you have any ideas on @JacobJohnson was that Openhab and Ubuntu seem to fairly resource heavy, I ended up needing about 4GB of RAM and 2vCores to have it running nice. wonder if it’s just the Ubuntu desktop version or Ubuntu server or Debian 10 might be better.
Also, do you use a specific VNC or do you mainly just SSH in, if so what SSH client do you use? I have just been using Putty.
Also @JacobJohnson how do you go about install Java 8 on Debian, I have had nothing but issues trying to get it to install, do you run 32bit Debian for you openhab install, its the only thing I can think why i cant install it. java 11 installs fine but I get the old “E: Package ‘oracle-java8-installer’ has no installation candidate”, driving me crazy lol.
Managed to get Java and openhab working last night, ended up using Zulu’s java as openJDK seems to have issues going with it. seems like its working sweet. I love how easy it is with headless setups to set everything up. the only thing I vnc in for is setting the vm’s static ip.
@JacobJohnson I am taking the plunge this weekend and cranking up the squirrels in my HP DL380 G7. Because you suggest ESXi, I think I will head that direction. Being as I am a serious noob in this world, I assume the free licensed version is way more than I need? And it still has the 8 core restriction per VM and the inability to back them up once created? Any suggestions as far as setting this beast up?
I have a good Win7 enterprise ISO that i can do some VM’s with and do a Blue Iris setup, want to do a dedicated Plex VM, and who knows where that will take me? Hell, I may even do a Linux distro install and try to go over to the dark side!!! LOL I so need to do that.
@Guru_Of_Nothing it is definitely fun, I think the free ESXi is good for most things, cant do hot-plug of resource changes like CPU or ram but nothing wrong with doing a shutdown.
I have spun 5 VMs up[ this week as I delve into learning more Node.js, I been using Debian for most things as it seems least resource heavy and just use Putty to SSH in. Pretty fun.