Ask Slashdot: Computer Test Lab Set-Up For Home? 142
An anonymous reader writes "For as long as I've been playing around with computers I've had a home test lab. I found it to be a great learning tool. However, I haven't invested much money into it lately and because of aging hardware I can't get what I want out of it anymore. So a revamp is in order. I've looked into several cloud vendors for a box I can rent to do some virtualization, but it doesn't seem to be cost effective or practical. What are your thoughts on it? What set-up do you have at home for tinkering? Have you looked into hosted solutions for this?"
Virtualize (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy a computer.. Put >8GB of ram in it (i would recommend 2GB per VM, and 2GB for the host). Maybe some nice fast disks..
Load VMWare ESXi, or another OS and virtual machine software of your choice..
The ability to snapshot and restore things will save you so much time testing things, you'll wonder how you used to get things done before. Maybe, setup a second system or laptop for things like wireless testing, drivers, etc.. things you can't simulate in a VM.. but with the virtual networks in most VM's, you can setup some very, very complex networks...