So the Xeon chips are much better quality silicon vs the i9 and i7s. Which is why they push it towards business grade workloads rather than consumer. These days Xeons even push their speeds (GHz) as high as the prosumer CPU's so that is no longer a valid comparison. TLDR: If you have a specific need for ECC (Error Correcting Memory), get the Xeons, otherwise stick to the prosumer cpu's like i9 and i7. More on reddit.com

Workstation might be more reliable, depends on if you spec it with a redundant power supply, ECC RAM, and how good the cooling is. Keep in mind the Xeon chips have relatively low per-core performance compared to high-end desktop chips. The primary benefit is high memory capacity and PCI-E bandwidth. If you are spending this kind of money on a workstation you should research if your applications will favour this kind of setup, or ideally run your own benchmarks. If you do need the memory capacity and PCI-E bandwidth look at a Threadripper or EPYC build, the per-core performance is higher and the total core count scales much higher. https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/server/epyc/9005-series.html#specifications https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/workstations/ryzen-threadripper.html#specifications Distributed computing is a niche setup. It requires per application integration, most workloads do not scale this way. Above all else, do not build a system yourself. The headache of being responsible for every individual component is not worthwhile in a corporate job. Go with one of the major OEM's, or a professional builder like Puget Systems. https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/3d-design-workstations/blender/buy-359/ More on reddit.com

Intel stopped making mobile Xeon processors in the 11th generation. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/series/125035/intel-xeon-w-processor.html (select “Mobile”) Standard Intel i7/i9 processors are just fine and you can get 13th Gen processors without issue. More on reddit.com

Hypervisor Choice: - Whatever you like, though as a Linux user mostly these days, I'd lean toward KVM or Xen. Resource Allocation: - Depends on what you intend to run in the VM. Remote Access: - SSH has been good enough for me. Storage: - Configuration depends on what you are doing in said VMs. As for kind of storage, SSD of read / write performance is paramount. HDD if read / write performance does not matter, and you are looking for bulk storage. More on reddit.com