Where did 2024 go!? I can not believe there is only a few more months left before the end of the year!
During VMware Explore US, I had several folks ask whether I was going to publish a 2024 edition of my annual interesting VMware homelab kit blog post, simliar to HERE and HERE for 2023 and 2023 respectively. While I had planned for this originally, I was pretty busy this year and getting hands on with some of the latest Intel 14th Generation systems did not happen until much later and hence why I had not put anything together.
I was recently reminded of this request again and it feels like the right time to summarize the various kits that I have come across and/or have gotten hands on throughout the year.
Homelab Trends
There are also some interesting trends that I have observed in 2024, especially as it pertains to VMware Homelabs/Development/Testing purposes:
- The support for non-binary DDR5 SODIMM memory modules has become the new norm and can enable small form factor systems to get up to 96GB of memory
- Intel 14th (Consumer) CPU introduces a third core type (LPE) into its Hybrid architecture which has some implications as mentioned in my review of the ASUS NUC 14 Pro as an example
- Having more M.2 NVMe or general NVMe slots will be extremely advantageous with the introduction of vSphere NVMe Memory Tiering capability
- OCuLink supported peripherals, especially for external GPU and storage is slowly becoming a reality after its initial introduction in 2012 and may finally give Thunderbolt some competition
