I’m putting together a home lab which I will use to learn/test/play with new technologies. A virtual environment allows you to create test environments which help with studying for MCP, VCP or other IT exams.
Here is what I have so far:
Networking:
Cisco SG300-10 Managed Switch
Router:
Alix 2-3 running pfSense. I got this router from Yawarra Tiny Computers a few years ago and its as solid as a rock.
Server:
I have yet to put this together. I was previously using a Dell PowerEdge T110. I found that server to be too big and too noisy. It also maxed out at 16GB of RAM. Here are the parts I got for the new server:
RAM: Kingston Hyper X Fury HX316C10FBK2/16 (x2 for 32GB RAM).
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Q87M-MK – This board has two NICs and supports Intel vPro.
CPU: Intel Core i5 4690S – This CPU supports all virtualisation requirements, plus it has vPro, which allows remote KVM.
PSU: Corsair VS350
Case: Silverstone SG02B-F Black Micro ATX
I will be installing VMware ESXi 5.5 on this machine. ESXi 5.5 does not include the driver for the network interfaces used on this board, so I used the instructions here to create a custom install ISO, which I hope can be mounted remotely using the vPro feature.
My next post will have the results of this setup!
David Candy's Blog 
I’ll am very interested to see how this goes for you, I’m looking at a similar build with the same MB, an Intel i5 4590 CPU and Kingston RAM.
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Hi, man good works.
I need to work at a new whitebox, you have worked fine with this mainboard?
can you explain how configure the iso, to work the two nic?
tnx, bye Enzo