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Build Help Requested: ESXI White Box

T

timswim78

Diamond Member
I want to build an ESXI white box. I only need a motherboard, RAM, CPU (and network card if the integrated network card does not work with ESXI). I plan to run two and sometimes three OS's, so I am guessing that I will want a quad core CPU. I want the mobo to have four slots for RAM and support 16GB. At this time, I plan to buy 8GB (2 x 4GB) and upgrade in the future.

1. I will be using this system as an ESXI white box. I am in school for IT and want to be able to run different OS's for my classes and projects. The OS's will be server 2008, Windows 7, and same flavors of linux.

2. My budget is about $220-$260 for a mobo, cpu, RAM and network card (if needed).

3. I live and buy parts in the U.S.A.

4. I am fine with Intel or AMD. The AM3 boards with integrated graphics (e.g., 880g and the like) are appealing to me.

5. i have all of the other system parts (SATA hard drive, DVDRW, PSU, case, cables, etc.)

6. I have read some similar threads.

7. I have no plans to overclock.

8. No gaming.

9. I plan to build in one to two months.

10. Let me have it! I appreciate your help.
 
Memory will be your biggest bottleneck, so get as much as possible. 16GB can be had for cheap. Disk will probably be your next bottleneck. You will probably not be bottlenecked by the CPU. If budget constraints force you to choose, go with a dual-core CPU and the extra RAM.

ESXi doesn't support most onboard RAID controllers. Don't plan on using RAID unless you get a separate controller. Do plan to install ESXi on a USB flash drive.

In my experience, Intel's whitebox stuff is the most likely to be supported. AMD whiteboxes are more problematic. Make sure any Intel equipment you gets supports Intel VT.

ESXi does not take advantage of any graphical hardware. Any graphics adapters that does more than display a VGA image will be a waste of electricity.

Unless you're going to school to learn about ESXi specifically, VMware Workstation will probably better meet your needs.
 
theevilsharpie said:
Memory will be your biggest bottleneck, so get as much as possible. 16GB can be had for cheap. Disk will probably be your next bottleneck. You will probably not be bottlenecked by the CPU. If budget constraints force you to choose, go with a dual-core CPU and the extra RAM.

ESXi doesn't support most onboard RAID controllers. Don't plan on using RAID unless you get a separate controller. Do plan to install ESXi on a USB flash drive.

In my experience, Intel's whitebox stuff is the most likely to be supported. AMD whiteboxes are more problematic. Make sure any Intel equipment you gets supports Intel VT.

ESXi does not take advantage of any graphical hardware. Any graphics adapters that does more than display a VGA image will be a waste of electricity.

Unless you're going to school to learn about ESXi specifically, VMware Workstation will probably better meet your needs.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, especially about the RAID and AMD stuff. I do not plan on using RAID.

I've been using VMware products on my Windows laptop and my iMac, but I want to work with ESXI, just to get familiar with it.
 
I would suggest you get ESXi, free version, and learn and use it; it's very helpful, easy, and simple to set up.

Get Intel NICs and use Intel SATA controllers (ICH10), and you'll be fine with NICs and disk.

Get all the RAM you can cram in there.

I have been using a quad-core Dell 530 and a quad-core Dell 518 for a few years now with very good results. I slapped in an Intel NIC in each, used either built-in SATA ICH9 or added an Adaptec 3405, and it's all set. 8GB max is my one major limitation, but it's an older system... if I were buying now I'd get a basic Dell quad-core i5 and put some high-density RAM in there, paying a little extra if required for higher density sticks.

The RAID array has been annoying because Adaptec doesn't have a CIM plug-in for ESXi to allow ESXi's interface to control their RAID adapters, but aside from that it's been fine.
 
Since you're in Maryland, go here:

http://www.microcenter.com/at_the_stores/rockville.html



And peruse the choices listed here:

http://www.microcenter.com/specials/...ndlePROMO.html

That'll save you a bit of money......nice little quad core AMD Phenom II X4 840 cpu with motherboard (several choices) for $100 or so. Can't beat that. And this leaves a LOT of your budget for memory.

Want faster? 6 core AMD Phenom II X6 1055 with motherboard for under $200. Still leaves a lot of room for memory.

Honestly, with your budget, you'd almost be foolish to not at least consider this option.
 
Meghan54 said:
Since you're in Maryland, go here:

http://www.microcenter.com/at_the_stores/rockville.html



And peruse the choices listed here:

http://www.microcenter.com/specials/...ndlePROMO.html

That'll save you a bit of money......nice little quad core AMD Phenom II X4 840 cpu with motherboard (several choices) for $100 or so. Can't beat that. And this leaves a LOT of your budget for memory.

Want faster? 6 core AMD Phenom II X6 1055 with motherboard for under $200. Still leaves a lot of room for memory.

Honestly, with your budget, you'd almost be foolish to not at least consider this option.
Click to expand...

AMD platforms are much more likely to require a discrete storage controller and NIC for ESXi to function properly. This makes them uncompetitive for a small ESXi whitebox build.
 
theevilsharpie said:
Memory will be your biggest bottleneck, so get as much as possible. 16GB can be had for cheap. Disk will probably be your next bottleneck. You will probably not be bottlenecked by the CPU. If budget constraints force you to choose, go with a dual-core CPU and the extra RAM.

ESXi doesn't support most onboard RAID controllers. Don't plan on using RAID unless you get a separate controller. Do plan to install ESXi on a USB flash drive.

In my experience, Intel's whitebox stuff is the most likely to be supported. AMD whiteboxes are more problematic. Make sure any Intel equipment you gets supports Intel VT.

ESXi does not take advantage of any graphical hardware. Any graphics adapters that does more than display a VGA image will be a waste of electricity.

Unless you're going to school to learn about ESXi specifically, VMware Workstation will probably better meet your needs.
Click to expand...

This. This is exactly what I did with my ESXi box. I use it for a Minecraft server (CentOS 5.6 allotted 2.25GB of RAM and 2GB allotted to the java VM instance of minecraft), as well as a web/gallery server (CentOS 5.6 alotted 512MB of RAM). It runs amazingly smooth and fast. The box has 4GB of RAM total, so I have room to spare. It also only runs on a 2.4GHz dual core Xeon, and it never breathes hard. RAM will always be your commodity in a VM server. Though ESXi has really good memory management, and it CAN run machines with more memory tooled out to them than there is total in the box for brief periods (say a lab environment for a class), say it tells you to make 4 machines with 2GB each but your box only has 6GB, well as long as the USED memory of each machine doesnt total more than 6GB you can do it and it will allow you to run them with no complaints. Of course you could always just adjust the RAM allotment as well.

I cant use the ICH7 RAID but thats okay, i do regular backups. Def stick with Intel for ease of install and management.

I agree with the workstation (or even virtual box or something if you need to stick with free like ESXi) route would be a good way as well, of course a PC with 8+ GB would then be necessary, which may not be feasible. I was actually quite pleased with the console view of ESXi, its pretty responsive with the tools installed, so for a free implementation, it is great for labs.
 
Paperlantern said:
This. This is exactly what I did with my ESXi box. I use it for a Minecraft server (CentOS 5.6 allotted 2.25GB of RAM and 2GB allotted to the java VM instance of minecraft), as well as a web/gallery server (CentOS 5.6 alotted 512MB of RAM). It runs amazingly smooth and fast. The box has 4GB of RAM total, so I have room to spare. It also only runs on a 2.4GHz dual core Xeon, and it never breathes hard. RAM will always be your commodity in a VM server. Though ESXi has really good memory management, and it CAN run machines with more memory tooled out to them than there is total in the box for brief periods (say a lab environment for a class), say it tells you to make 4 machines with 2GB each but your box only has 6GB, well as long as the USED memory of each machine doesnt total more than 6GB you can do it and it will allow you to run them with no complaints. Of course you could always just adjust the RAM allotment as well.

I cant use the ICH7 RAID but thats okay, i do regular backups. Def stick with Intel for ease of install and management.

I agree with the workstation (or even virtual box or something if you need to stick with free like ESXi) route would be a good way as well, of course a PC with 8+ GB would then be necessary, which may not be feasible. I was actually quite pleased with the console view of ESXi, its pretty responsive with the tools installed, so for a free implementation, it is great for labs.
Click to expand...

ESXi can oversubscribe the RAM, so for cases where you only have an 8GB RAM machine and you want to run 16GB worth of VMs, that's not a problem at all - between code page sharing and ballooning, it's unlikely you'd even notice the difference at the consumer level.

I don't use the ESXi VMware console that much because Microsoft's Remote Desktop is so good. 🙂
 
dclive said:
ESXi can oversubscribe the RAM, so for cases where you only have an 8GB RAM machine and you want to run 16GB worth of VMs, that's not a problem at all - between code page sharing and ballooning, it's unlikely you'd even notice the difference at the consumer level.

I don't use the ESXi VMware console that much because Microsoft's Remote Desktop is so good. 🙂
Click to expand...

Agreed. However for situations such as mine, the two servers i'm running... RDP isnt an option if i need to administer them. However a putty session gets 99% of what i need... it is very seldom that i need the gui. Webmin is very handy on those servers as well.
 
I just recently bought a Dell Optiplex 755 off Dell Financial for $210ish shipped to my door. It came with Intel E8400 and 2x2GB + 2x 1GB RAM, DVD-RW and for whatever reason 2x160GB HDDs. It came with some kind of ATI video card but that came out immediately; I have no idea if it even works since onboard video is more than sufficient. The DVD drive got unplugged too; no reason for it really since I use ISOs.

The two internal HDDs have been unplugged because I wanted to play with ISCSI. I have an Atom board laying around setup ISCSI target using Fedora 15. Thus the Optiplex 755 runs diskless basically.

The downside is that I think these can only handle up to 8GB so that could be very limiting and it is DDR2 so RAM cost is higher than DDR3 (I think).

The Intel Chipset can make a RAID array out of the two disks, but ESXi sees it as two separate disks still. I installed the hypervisor on a 4GB USB flash drive, but to be honest, 2GB is probably plenty.

So far I only have Server 2008R2 with a trial of VCenter, a Fedora 14, and a Win7 VM running on it at the moment and they all seem happy. RDP does work much better, but the VMware console is acceptable especially after VM Ware tools are installed as previously mentioned.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the advice everyone. I've decided to up the budget allocation for this gear, in order to get equipment that will work better for my projects.
 
dclive said:
So's 1GB, or using a little space on a hard drive.
Click to expand...

I don't like running it off the HDD myself because then your hypervisor is tied to the disk in the machine. If you're using USB media, then you can float the drives between machines as necessary. Granted, that's probably not an issue in a home setup.
 
mfenn said:
I don't like running it off the HDD myself because then your hypervisor is tied to the disk in the machine. If you're using USB media, then you can float the drives between machines as necessary. Granted, that's probably not an issue in a home setup.
Click to expand...

Help me understand the issue - unless you have nfs, iscsi, or a San, it is tied to disks in the machine anyway so what's the difference?
 
dclive said:
Help me understand the issue - unless you have nfs, iscsi, or a San, it is tied to disks in the machine anyway so what's the difference?
Click to expand...

Not really, if a board dies (for example) you can just pop the disks in another box already running ESXi and not have to worry about any issues when you reboot.
 
mfenn said:
Not really, if a board dies (for example) you can just pop the disks in another box already running ESXi and not have to worry about any issues when you reboot.
Click to expand...

But the version of ESXi that boots from USB is the same as what would boot from hard drive, so in either case you could do that. What is different? And if you moved disks to another machine already running ESXi, you'd simply tell that machine to keep booting from its' own local / usual copy of ESXi, so ... what's the difference?

Sorry - I'm not an ESXi expert, and I'd like to know.
 
dclive said:
But the version of ESXi that boots from USB is the same as what would boot from hard drive, so in either case you could do that. What is different? And if you moved disks to another machine already running ESXi, you'd simply tell that machine to keep booting from its' own local / usual copy of ESXi, so ... what's the difference?

Sorry - I'm not an ESXi expert, and I'd like to know.
Click to expand...

That's the main issue I was getting at. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell which device is really being booted, IMHO. A $5 USB key is worth the trouble to ensure that the problem can't happen.

It's not really a big deal either way, sorry if I made it out to seem that way. 🙂 It's just not ideal IMHO to store ESXi on the same media as the VM storage pools.
 
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