My VMware homelab setup

In my role as TAM at VMware by Broadcom, I find it very useful to have a self managed homelab environment. Although I have several options available internally, it does not always provide the full access and/or flexibility.

My homelab should be cost effective, but powerful enough to deploy a (nested) VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5 (at the time of buying) environment.

Initial Hardware

After looking at the various options, I decided to go for a single server solution that could scale easily, was somewhat affordable and somewhat energy efficient. At first I looked at a refurbished HPE DL360 or DL380 or Dell comparable alternative. Unfortunately I don’t have the additional space to place such system where it can’t be heard, so I ended up buying a refurbished HP Z640 Workstation with the following specs:

Dual Intel Xeon E5-2680v2 10-Core 2.8GHz-3.6GHz, 128GB DDR3 RAM
Boot device: USB
Storage: Samsung 860 SSD

Advantages for me where:

Little space required.
Relatively quite and energy friendly (unless under full load, but nothing compare to a DL380).
Dual CPU with lots of cores.
Room for up to 512 GB DDR Memory.
Easy to add “cheap” SATA SSD local storage.

Hardware Upgrade

This system served my well for 3-4 years, but after some years I wanted an upgrade to satisfy more demanding and additional products and additional requirements from my side, I decided to swap the Z640 system for a newer HPE Z8 G4 Workstation with the following specs:

Dual Intel Xeon Gold 6148 CPU (20 core) @ 2.40GHz
384 GB DDR4 RAM
Boot device: WD Blue SSD
Storage: Several local attached Samsung 860 / 870 SSDs

Besides the better hardware architecture of this system (no CPU/RAM board for the second CPU), other advantages were the newer generation CPUs with more cores and more memory (possible).

Storage

In between the system swap, I added additional local SSDs to the workstations and installed a [QNAP TS-664] NAS with the following specs and configuration:

Intel N5095 CPU (4 core)
16 (8+8) GB RAM
Dual 2.5Gbe NICs
4x Seagate IronWolf 4TB SATA Disk (ST4000VN006), for static storage.
2x Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB M.2, for VM storage

I chose the QNAP over Synology or DIY for price, quality and better hardware platfrom (CPU, M.2 Slots, Networking). No complaints about the software as it can also easily run containers natively.

Networking

For Networking I’m using

Topton Mini PC
- Intel Silver N6005 (4 core) @ 2.00GHz
- 8 GB RAM
- OpnSense 25.x firewall and routing software
Unifi USW 16 PoE, 1 Gbe Switch

Update June 27, 2025

I bought an Asus Hyper M.2 X16 card with one Samsung 990 Pro M.2 for Memory Tiering. More on that in a separate blog.

Software

On the workstation I have installed ESXi 8.0 U3e with vCenter 8.0U3 managing. Other VMs I have running directly on ESXi:

2x Active Directory Domain Controller + DNS
Full Aria Suite; Automation, Operations, Operations for Logs, Suite Lifecycle, VIDM
Several Nested ESXi 8 and 9 VMs for Nested VCF 5 and 9 environments