User:Yougotborked

Core Network
Use Cat5e, or fiber, infiniband, 10gig, Stay away from cat6. wait for cat7 or 8, 9 etc...

Router
Pfsense in a VM

Switch
really any old 24 port Gig switch from a major brand, Cisco, dell, juniper, etc. should be fine, use ebay to maximize cost savings. Configuration is a plus, for (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation )

The Hardware
This is a generic SAN box with iscsi. I am using an old PC that has a bunch of sata ports for this. My box is 32 bit, which leads to problems I will write about in the next section.

Again I would reccomend having enough network ports for this, as this will be the main disk hub for your house. You can use fiber or something else, but I just have 2 ethernet ports in use on mine.

The Hardware
You have two options, first trying to buy old servers. While this may be appealing, DDR2 ram for the Xeon class of servers is wildly expensive. Specifics include PC2-FB5300 and so on. The whole Fully Buffered ram market is something to stay away from. If I could do it again, I would build a DDR3 server from the ground up with 2 processors.

Next make sure it runs EXSi before you buy it. If you are building it from the ground up, you should be fine because you are using new enough components that 64bit support is not an issue. Finally, make sure you have enough network ports.

1 for file server

2 for PfSense VM (1 in 1 out)

1 for every other 3 vms.

The VMs
My VMs are organized as follows.