The benefit of buying an R730 (I own two) is if you’ve literally never laid hands on a server before. You’ll learn things you didn’t know existed coming from the consumer world like management NICs, iDRAC, raid controllers, redundant power supplies, racks and rails, ECC memory, internal flash storage, etc. That is the value of purchasing a server.
Having said that, if you already know most of that stuff, absolutely do not buy an R730. They’re loud even with fans ramped down, they’re power hogs, they have a huge server depth so the space they take up is insane, and they’re crazy heavy and produce heat. There really is no advantage over a more modern desktop machine which you could still run ESXi on fine as long as you pick one with an intel NIC that’s compatible.
The benefit of buying an R730 (I own two) is if you’ve literally never laid hands on a server before. You’ll learn things you didn’t know existed coming from the consumer world like management NICs, iDRAC, raid controllers, redundant power supplies, racks and rails, ECC memory, internal flash storage, etc. That is the value of purchasing a server.
Having said that, if you already know most of that stuff, absolutely do not buy an R730. They’re loud even with fans ramped down, they’re power hogs, they have a huge server depth so the space they take up is insane, and they’re crazy heavy and produce heat. There really is no advantage over a more modern desktop machine which you could still run ESXi on fine as long as you pick one with an intel NIC that’s compatible.