Member Avatar for it@61@sec

I'm planning to set up my own private virtualization server at home with the following hardware setup:

Motherboard: MSI X99S SLI PLUS, Socket-2011-3
CPU:         Intel Core i7-5820K, Socket-LGA2011-3
Memory:      Max 128 GB DDR4 RAM (starting with 32 or 64 GB RAM)
PSU:         Cooler Master G550M, 550W PSU
Server box:  Cooler Master CM Force 500 Midi Tower
and some sort of water cooling system... :-)

I want to run the following OS-es:

- Linux Mint 17
- Windows 10
- Windows 7
- Windows 8.1
- Ubuntu 14.04
- and others...  :-)

On my home office desktop I want to have only a monitor, keyboard and mouse connected to a Raspberry PI model 2 using it as a thin client
communicating to the server(s) using WiFi or HomePlug.

I think the best solution would be to use a bare-metal hypervisor, but the question is:
Which one should I choose ?
(It must be a free version - no licensing).

And how should I set up the storage system ?
SSD or plain old harddisks ?

Suggestions welcome

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Dani AI

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Short practical guidance: for a free, bare‑metal home-lab today look first at Proxmox VE (simple web UI, KVM + LXC, built‑in ZFS/Ceph support) or XCP‑ng (community Xen fork) — both are hobbyist‑friendly and let you avoid vendor lock‑in. VMware ESXi used to be the de‑facto free choice for home labs, but its “free” availability changed after the Broadcom/VMware transition (it was removed from free distribution in 2024 and an entry‑level ESXi 8 re‑appeared quietly in 2025), so verify the current download/license limits before committing to an ESXi‑only workflow. (proxmox.com)

Storage and reliability notes you can act on right away: put your host and “desktop” VM disks on SSD/NVMe for much better random‑IO responsiveness, keep mass/backup storage on HDDs, and plan redundancy (mirror/RAID10 style) rather than RAID5 for mixed VM/desktop loads. If you use ZFS (great for single‑node homelabs) avoid hiding disks behind a hardware RAID—use HBAs or pass‑through so ZFS sees raw drives, and consider Ceph only if you plan a true multi‑node cluster. ECC RAM and a UPS are strongly recommended for any serious virtualization host. (pve.proxmox.com)

Raspberry Pi thin‑client and migration tips: a Pi 2 can be a cheap RDP/remote display client (WTware, rdesktop/FreeRDP/Remmina or a Chromium‑based thin client), but wired Ethernet gives the most consistent UX — HomePlug/powerline is usable but can add latency/variance. To move VirtualBox VHD/VDI disks to VMware you can convert images locally: e.g. with VirtualBox or qemu-img (shown below). Before booting a converted Windows VM remove VirtualBox Guest Additions and install VMware Tools; test snapshots/backups first. 

# VirtualBox (on a workstation)
VBoxManage clonemedium disk.vhd disk.vmdk --format VMDK

# qemu-img
qemu-img convert -f vpc -O vmdk disk.vhd disk.vmdk

See the VirtualBox docs for VBoxManage clonemedium and WTware/RPi thin‑client projects for thin‑client options. ()

Notes tied to the thread: ’s VMware suggestion is sensible if you accept licensing quirks; ’s plan to use a Pi thin client is reasonable but prioritize network stability and fast local storage for the Windows desktop VMs.

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Member Avatar for rproffitt

I think this alone dashes your hope of using Microsoft's free HyperV.
"Hyper-V 2012 can only be managed by Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 or their successors."

I was going to note Proxmux but then I read http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1820817 which lead me back to VMWare.

You have an abitious goal so I take it this is not your first rodeo.

Member Avatar for it@61@sec

It's the first time I'm trying to build a virtualization server, but I have been working with data centers (before virtualization) since 1984. So I THINK I know what I'm doing. :-).

VMWare seems to be the best choice, I agree.

Will there be any problems using my Virtualbox HDDs on VMWare (type VHD).. =

Edited by it@61@sec because: More comments
Member Avatar for rproffitt

Sorry but I bet https://www.google.com/#q=vmware+vhd answers the use or rather conversion from VHD for use on VMWare.

I think you're getting close to making it happen. But I'll share I went down that path of a central VM system and disposed of it a few years ago. It was fun, learned a lot but nothing compares to the power of the dark side. Whoops, I mean that I went back to running what I want on a nice laptop.

Edited by rproffitt because: Typo.
Member Avatar for it@61@sec

My main goal is to free space on my office desktop.
Then I want to be able to test different flavours of OS'es in a "real" environment.
But of course: I could use this system as a desktop PC, and use host virtualization instead.. :-)
(BTW: VirtualBox only supports four CPU-cores as far as I know..).

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