I posted in GD but wanted to get some input from you guys as well. I ordered a ThinkServer TS440 for kicks, still need to find some things to do with it.

For starters though, better to use VMware or HyperV for a hypervisor? I'm leaning towards HyperV because I've been wanting to learn Powershell and figured this would be a good reason. If I do go with HyperV I was probably going to use the free version unless, and this is probably a dumb question, but is there anyway to get Server 2012 "cheapish" legally? I don't have or know anyone with access to dreamspark or technet.


Right now this is just a toy, but I'm going to turn it into a home lab type setup for edu eventually. Any other recommendations on software or misc?

Write to Hillary Clinton for advice?

and then do the opposite?

Preferably.

Neither is better then the other - it comes down to wanting to run one over the other, you mention that you are looking at this for a education reasons so I would pick what you want to learn and use that as your hyper-visor.  If you go HyperV route go with Hyper-V server 2012.

 

Hyper-V Server (the free version) is built on Server Core and is exclusively managed via the Hyper-V MMC snap-in or via PowerShell, so good call there for learning PowerShell.

As for the Server OS thing, officially in public there are some things I can't tell you but if you send me a PM, we could have a brief discussion about the topic.

sent, thanks.

You can manage vSphere with PowerCLI which is just Powershell cmdlets so if it's just about Powershell either option has that feature.

Not sure it really matters since you'll just have a single host.  Most features won't be available to you.

VMware