On a regular basis I already receive a number of inquires from both internal VMware folks as well as external partners and customers about VMware homelabs and the type of hardware that can be used. After demo'ing our recent USB to SDDC project, the requests have literally tripled! Most folks are generally inquiring BOM details and/or where to purchase the Intel NUC or the SuperMicro E200-8D.
In particular, the SuperMicro E200-8D has probably received the most amount of interest lately. In fact, I am also interested in one after having an opportunity to play with one during the Melbourne VMUG. One thing I had noticed while talking to several colleagues who have purchased this system both locally within the Bay Area as well as overseas such as Australia was that one particular reseller kept coming up over and over again. That vendor was MITXPC which is a local bay area company located over in Fremont which specializes in Mini-ITX systems.
The reason MITXPC was being used by the majority of these folks was simple, they had the best price for the SuperMicro E200-8D which was significantly cheaper than other vendors including Amazon.
Vendor | Price |
---|---|
E200-8D on MITXPC | $799 USD ($783.02 w/discount code) |
E200-8D on Amazon | $849 USD |
Having heard good things about MITXPC, I decided to reach out to them and see if there was anything special they could do for the VMware Community. I was able to get a special discount code that would offer folks an additional 2% off their entire purchase at MITXPC. For those of you who have been holding off on a refresh your home lab or itching to build your own, this is a great time! If you would like to take advantage of this offer, simply use the discount code VIRTUALLYGHETTO2OFF when you check out. I would like to give a huge thanks to Eric Yui of MITXPC for working with me on this and helping out the VMware Community.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with MITXPC.
Timo Sugliani (@tsugliani) says
Great initiative William 🙂
Andreas Behrendt says
Hi William,
MITXPC have really high shipping cost to europe.
So for all folks in Europe ABCsystems AG offers the E200-8D for 830€.
Just contact them abcbox (at) abcsystems (dot) ch
Calvin Nghe says
Thanks for sharing. However, I just bought the Intel NUC 7th Gen. Love the size and WAF! Maybe this could be my next addition to the lab.
Marcelo Costa says
Hi William. I already asked it on another post, but I guess that question will fit better here. Do you know if there are any plans to vmware supports Supermicro AS-E301-9D-8CN4?
Also, do you know if AS-E301-9D-8CN4 works with ESXi even without official suppport?
AS-E301-9D-8CN4 looks a good alternative to SYS-E300-(D