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Home Lab Setting

Back in the day when IBM PC XT/AT compatible was introduced in 1984 with microprocessor Intel 80286, building PC was quite cumbersome. Not only slow, booting up with Floppy disk, DOS a non GUI interface, also upgrading RAM memory was so tedious. You need special chip socket tool to insert every chips on the motherboard instead of using memory slots to insert memory cards. 

When it comes to home labs my main focus is the size, power, heat, noise, performance, and budget factors.  On top of that the IT field encompasses a host of various technologies and many of us are striving to master different concepts. Today my lab is primarily geared towards Microsoft technologies, specifically Hyper-V.   To maximize server performance, It’s important to consider the best CPU, high speed RAM with at least 16 GB, multiple disk arrays

I have tested Windows 10 (Professional version), 2012 R2 (Server) and several Virtual Machines: VMWare, Virtual Box and Hyper-V, with minimum memory I have, I found it’s best to run on Windows 2012 server with Hyper-V virtual machine. I created 4 servers on separate disks: 

  • Domain Controller Server
  • SQL Server
  • Exchange Server
  • SharePoint 2016 Server

Configuration Specifications

Hardware: 16 GB memory, Intel Core i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz,  2TB Harddrive, SSD 128GB Operating Systems: Windows 2012 R2 Applications: SQL server 2014 Service Pack 2. and Exchange Server 2016
  • Memory : 1000 MB
  • Processor: 1 Virtual Processor
  • Virtual Hard Drive: 30 GB
  • Physical Hard Drive: IDE
I set this server as minimum as possible, since Domain Controller requires less memory
  • Memory : 1000 MB
  • Processor: 2 Virtual Processor
  • Virtual Hard Drive: 30 GB
  • Physical Hard Drive: IDE
I set this server as minimum as well, similar to Domain Controller setting with the exception 2 Virtual Processor
  • Memory : 4000 MB
  • Processor: 4 Virtual Processor
  • Virtual Hard Drive: 30 GB
  • Physical Hard Drive: IDE
SharePoint require a lots of memory, therefore I set Dynamic memory initially 4000 MB and 4 Virtual Processor
  • Memory : 4000 MB
  • Processor: 5 Virtual Processor
  • Virtual Hard Drive: 30 GB
  • Physical Hard Drive: SSD
Exchange server uses the most memory. I set Dynamic memory as high as possible to avoid crashing. I also utilize SSD to allocate the hard drive