I just looked up what zfs is and I don’t think I need to go with that for now since I’m only testing at the moment.

I was finally able to set up vCenter with two ESXi VMs after enabling nested virtualization. I’m out of RAM now just running those and a Windows 10 VM, even after adjusting the initial RAM settings lower. I was hoping to add some more VMs and a domain controller, but I think I might have to get more RAM than 32gb right now.

That’s a good idea. Too bad I’ve recently just built my current PC and won’t upgrade for another 5-6 years, though. I’ve also passed down my old one to my sibling.

Oh, I was just trying to copy what they have at my workplace, since it would be better if I was familiar with it. And it did work out great since I was able to fix a bug and complete a task that they had for a while thanks to setting up a VM of Windows Server DC and fiddling around with it and RHEL.

Is hosting on a Windows machine not ideal? Don’t really have much experience with other OS to make a good assessment.

I do have an old laptop. Can you tell me why it’s better to run a server on an old laptop than a gaming pc, though?

It’s an AMD CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads

So if my PC had 32gb of RAM, I should be fine with running VMware vSphere, Windows Server 2016 AD DC, and some Linux VMs that could run other tools like system monitors and such on it together? At least for just practice and not really running them 24/7 like an actual server would?

Electricity isn’t cheap at all here and I do live in a small apartment, unfortunately. It’s why I want to know if just making some changes to my main desktop PC would be better, as that would allow me to save on space, electricity, and heat.

I do have two Rasperry Pis right now. One of them I run Pihole on at the moment.