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Slick Jonsbo D31 computer case with embedded LCD screen for homelab

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Last month, I noticed a very interesting DIY (Do it Yourself) computer build from fellow colleague Cyprien Laplace, who you might know from the ESXi-Arm team.


No surprise, the build was for a new ESXi-Arm homelab using an ASRock Ampere Altra (ALTRAD8UD-1L2T) and configured with 64 CPUs and 128GB of memory! 🔥

At first, when Cyprien was sharing his build updates on Twitter/X, it looked like a standard DIY project but then several folks noticed he had a pretty unique computer case that included a built-in LCD screen! The classic grey/yellow screen pictured above running ESXi-Arm looks amazing and certainly useful for those wanting to remove the dependency of an external monitor.

If you are in the market for building or upgrading your homelab and want a unique computer case, check out th Jonsbo D31 which comes in both Black or White with two different models:

Black

White

Cyprien's ESXi-Arm build also recently won the best homelab community build (#3) project that was sponsored by Newegg and Ampere, so congrats on the W! 🥳🖥️🐈‍⬛

Hands on with new AMD "NUC" platform from ASRock 

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It has been rumored for some time now that AMD would be re-entering the embedded/small form factor (SFF) market and with their latest generation of Ryzen CPUs, timing could not be more perfect. With the rise of Edge and IoT workloads, new constraints like cost, footprint, low to no tech-touch and power consumption is now top of mind more than ever for customers.

At VMware, we certainly see interests from customers across this spectrum whether it is a traditional "ROBO" environment running a handful of Virtual Machines for a supermarket or retail chain to an industrial site such as an oil rig or factory to mobile infrastructure like a car, ship or even a submarine. On top of these use cases, personal and development labs continue to be extremely popular amongst our customer base for learning and training purposes.

Today, the Intel NUC is still by far the most popular platform due to its size, portability, cost and low power consumption for running VMware vSphere, vSAN & NSX. The idea of an AMD "NUC" kit which includes a chassis, motherboard and CPU is something that that many folks have been asking for. With the market mostly dominated by Intel, I certainly welcome AMD re-entering this market as this will certainly drive new solutions and innovations in this market. With that said, AMD has re-entered into this market and this is initially through partnerships with several OEMs/manufacturers.


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