Announcing my Generation 8 Super VMware Workstation!
I’ve been using VMware Workstation for many years and its been a great tool to have in my home lab plan. Over the last couple of years, I had been using multiple computers to do various tasks (VMware Workstation, PC, PLEX, Video Editing, etc.) and they seemed to work okay. Most of these were older PCs I had around that I repurposed. However, a follower of my blog made a very generous donation of several key components. It was enough to really get me thinking about creating a SUPER Workstation box. I wanted to make an all in one workstation that could handle everything I currently supported plus more. I started to evaluate what I wanted to accomplish and created a simple goal list.
Goals:- Support for 3 different Networks:
- I wanted to have a 1Gbe and 10Gbe into my Home lab
- The other connection would be used for basic networking
- Run VMware Workstation:
- Support several PC VMs
- Support nested ESXi/vSAN 8 VMs, without having to force the install
- Have enough resources to run everything from one box
- Run PLEX Server
- I wanted to make sure I had enough HDD space to run my PLEX media
- Video Editing
- Support x16 PCIe Video Card
- From time to time I create videos and I wanted a system that could be performant around this.
From there I inventoried the parts I already had, chose new components, and created my Generation 8 VMware Workstation.
BOM:
- OS: Windows 11 Pro for Workstation
- VMware: VMware Workstation 17 PRO
- Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro series PH-ES614PC_BK Black Steel
- Mobo: ASRack Rock EPC621D8A
- CPU: Xeon Gold 6252
- Cooler: Noctua NH-D9 DX-3647 4U
- RAM: 256GB (2933Mhz 2Rx4 ECC 4 x 64GB RAM)
- NVMe: 2 x Sabrent 2TB ROCKET NVMe PCIe
- SSD: Intel Optane 800GB P5800X
- HDD: 63TB 5 x Seagate IronWolf Pro 18TB
- Adapter: 3 x PCIe SSD U.2 Adapter
- VideoCard: GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER
- SATA Cable: SATA 6G Data Cable
- 10Gbe NIC: ASUS XG-C100C 10G Network Adapter
- BluRay Drive: LG Blu-ray Disc Rewriter
- UPS: APC Back-UPS PRO BN1500M2
To better clarify some of my component choices I created this video and announced my DREAM #vmware #workstation
I’m sure it will be updated as time goes and my most recent Bill of Materials (BOM) can be found here. https://vmexplorer.com/home-lab-bom/
vmexplorer 