After a 14 year hiatus from IT, I’ve decided to dive back into the field and am in the process of setting up my first home lab. My goal is to transition into an IT career, and I feel that hands on experience with a home lab would be immensely beneficial.

I have some experience from the past, I still own a Cisco lab from my CCNA practice days. Now I’m looking to expand my setup by adding a server that can host VMs and allow me to experiment with different environments such as Active Directory.

I’ve come across a Dell R730xd server being sold for £300 and I’m considering purchasing it. However, I’m not sure if it’s still a relevant model for my needs and if it can run ESXi efficiently. Here are the specs:

• Model: Dell PowerEdge R730xd
• CPU: 2x Xeon® E5-2683v3 (35M Cache, 2.00 GHz, 14-CORE, 9.6 GT/s, Total 28-CORE)
• Memory: 128GB DDR4 (upgradable to 512GB or 768GB)
• Storage: 8x900GB 2.5" SAS 10K Disks
• Raid Controller: PERC H730 (12GBps, 1GB NV Cache, RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60)
• Power Supply: 2 x 750 Platinum
• Networking: Dell 4-Port Gigabit Ethernet NIC, iDRAC8 with Enterprise License

Given these specifications, I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether this server is a good fit for my intended use. Is it overkill, or perhaps not sufficient? Any advice on whether this is a good deal and if it will suit my needs for learning and experimentation would be greatly appreciated.