VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Homelab Hardware Options

I have been getting a ton of inquiries lately, both internally as well as externally for hardware recommendations for building a new or updating an existing homelab/test environment to be able to deploy the full VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) solution. I typically receive at least half a dozen inquiries per week about general VMware Homelabs, but it has increased in volume lately, perhaps it was due to the recent US Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales or perhaps some are preparing for VCF 9 already?

In any case, I normally point users to my crowdsourced VMware Community Homelab Project, where users can submit their hardware build-of-materials (BOM), overall cost and the VMware solutions they are currently using.

While the VMware Community Homelab Project has been running for several years now and has helped numerous users, the majority of the submissions typically focus on subset of the VMware portfolio and only handful of submissions have included VCF and more importantly, some of the submissions are several years old.

Internally, a number of folks have shared more recent BOMs for building an environment to run the latest VCF 5.x release and I have also found several folks outside of VMware doing the same, so I thought it would be useful and timely to aggregate some of their hardware configurations to help give users an idea of what works and options as they are looking to revamp their lab going into 2025.

I would also like to mention a few resources that you might find useful as you embark on building your new VCF homelab/test environment:

• Check the following VMware KB CPU Support Deprecation and Discontinuation In vSphere Releases to understand which CPUs will be supported going forward, especially as it pertains to the next major vSphere release
• A number of folks internally have been using the popular PC Server and Parts site to source older, but powerful desktop workstations that are fairly inexpensive and is a good option if you do not want to splurge for the latest generation of Intel or AMD CPUs
• If you end up choosing a CPU that is no longer supported, make sure it has at least the XSAVE CPU instruction AND you can bypass the ESXi installer check by using allowLegacyCPU=TRUE
• Memory is usually the first resource that is exhausted, so make sure you have some space NVMe capacity to take advantage of the new vSphere NVMe (Memory) Tiering capability which is a huge game changer IMHO whether you are running workloads in the lab or in the future for production
• Speaking of CPU vendor, I am also noticing that more users are favoring AMD-based processors over Intel, not only from a cost perspective but general capabilities (core count, power, cooling, etc). Raiko (see below for more information) has a very nice setup and several folks have commented that it is very cost effective and will be following his BOM for VCF lab, so thanks for sharing Raiko!

• Whether you are building a lab environment for work or home, at the end of the day it is not about the physical thing (well it kinda is) but its ultimately an investment in yourself and your career. You will get out of it what you put into it and everyone has different needs, so there is no one size fits all and hopefully the resources on my VMware Community Homelab Project and builds listed below can give you an idea of what works and it ultimately is up to you to choose the best configuration based on your requirements, budget, goals and your significant other's needs 🙂

Note: If you have recently (in the past year) built out a new lab environment to run VCF 5.x or later and would like to share, feel free to leave a comment with the same details as the table or you can submit to the VMware Community Homelab Project by going HERE.