Which cheap used Server for lab/experiment environment ?

Hello

If you are buying a server to learn on or use for any purpose at home then you want to avoid really old hardware. One of the biggest mistakes I see is people buying 20 year old servers to learn on. Technology is constantly changing, and most of the technology in 20 year old servers is not used any more. So, ideally you would want to get the newest possible, but the newest possible is very expensive. Also, really old servers are not as energy efficient, they will cost you more over time.

The best servers for home labs and to learn on are the ones large companies are getting rid of. Large companies typically do not keep servers that are out of warranty or end of life. Right now, I think the 12th generation servers are the latest generation that companies are offloading. When they start being sold in large quantities the price drops a lot. If 12th generation is still too expensive then I suggest looking at 11th generation. The 7 series(R7xx) seems to be the biggest seller, so because they are probably the most populous they would likely be the most cost effective in relation to cost versus what you are getting.

In general, you can get rack servers cheaper than tower servers in the resale market. There are two main reasons for this, the first reason is that there are fewer of them. The second reason is that they are more sought after in the resale market because a lot of the resale market is home or small business use.

Thanks

Thank you for giving me the answer I was looking for,  

I still own a PE2900 (1cpu 8Gb) running more than 10 years for my little company , paid full price by the owner that remain astonished knowing I paid 150€ for a 2cpu 32Gb 4SAS PE2950 that is working flawlessly with ESXi5.5 and few VMs

Now I'm looking for something newer than this with less "unsupported" features and HW

R710 and R720 seem to have reasonable prices, let's see

Thank you