I'm Building a home VM server and was going to build one using the E5-2670 CPU. There is a great article on this
http://jptoto.jp/build-your-own-32-core-home-lab-server/
However, I started looking at old servers and found the ML350p Gen8 machine. I'm very familiar with HP tower and rack mount servers, they have alwas been very reliable. I can pick one up with 2@E5-2609, 32GB RAM no disk for $305. I intend to run the free version of ESXi 6.0 or 6.5 on this. Create VM's for testing things at home. I am a storage engineer and there are a number of simulators out their for NetApp, 3PAR, etc.
My Questions are:
1) Upgrade to E5-2670 CPU, from my research I may have to use ones from HP servers, is this true?
2) Add disk, the unit does support SATA disks, but I cannot find out if it is 6GB/s or 3GB/s
3) Version of VMware. Do I have to use the HP version or can I use the verison from vmWare that is free for 2 CPU systems?
Any and all help is appreciated with this. If you have done this I would appreciate your help.
Thanks,
MT-Geek