Equipment for building test lab

[Eycan'tcode]

I'm looking for a little input on the two options I'm weighing for building my virtual test lab. If at all possible, I would rather not have my daily PC running my virtual lab, but I leave that option open. I'm thinking of purchasing a Dell PowerEdge 2950 II (from ebay), installing Windows Server 2008 R2, installing VM VirtualBox so that I can set up an Active Directory environment to prepare me for the MCITP exams. This option would allow me to conserve the resources of my daily PC. If I were to use my daily PC (I7 quad, 3GB RAM, 80GB SSD, and 1TB storage with only 200GB of free space) I would more than likely have increase RAM and buy another HDD to store the VMs. How much more trouble would it be to go the PowerEdge 2950 II route?

Thanks.

 

[office politics]

it should be ok. I suggest searching for white boxes. This is a common term for self built virtual servers.

Also, there's no need to run virtual box on WIndows 2008 R2. That version of windows comes with Hyper-v. I would run the vms in Hyper-v.

here's a white box

Affordable Quiet 32GB RAM Home Lab/Whitebox Hyper-V server – Build List | Tom Arbuthnot's Lync'd Up Blog