Challenge: a second-hand homelab for Christmas - eviltoast

I have a single 64Gb RAM host (Supermicro Xeon E5-2630L v3) which is rather noisy.

What I’d like to do between now and Christmas is source three hosts (probably Mini-PCs) from eBay or Facebook or somewhere.

Constraints are:

  1. The host/processor must be able to run ESXi 8.0U2
  2. The max memory is at least 32GB
  3. I’d like minimum 2x1GB NICs whose hardware are supported by VMware OOTB
  4. Quiet

If anyone has any fruitful suggestions for hosts costing at most $350-$400 each then I’d be grateful.

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  • Bytepond@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I think it’s possible with a few HP tiny/mini/micro pcs, but aside from that, nothing but a few Minisforum models and the high end NUCs which make no sense anyway.