ESXi build

[phatDuck]

Hello,
I'm looking into building a ESXi whitebox for running multiple systems.
I basically need a CPU, Motherboard, Ram.. and any suggestions from people that have built ESXi white boxes.
1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.

Security tools and pen testing.

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
$700.00
3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
US
4. IF you're buying parts OUTSIDE the US, please post a link to the vendor you'll be buying from.
We can't be expected to scour the internet on your behalf, chasing down deals in your specific country... Again, help us, help YOU.

5. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc.
Open to whatever is most completable for ESXi

6. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
I already have a standard full size ATX case.
350W power supply
I have 2 Intel 520 SSD 180Gb drives and multiple 7200RPM 3.5" 1TB drives.
Pioneer DVD burner

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
no overclocking
8. What resolution, not monitor size, will you be using?
17" lcd - don't think this matters..
9. WHEN do you plan to build it?
Note that it is usually not cost or time effective to choose your build more than a month before you actually plan to be using it.
ASAP
X. Do you need to purchase any software to go with the system, such as Windows or Blu Ray playback software?
Nope

 

[MustISO]

I would suggest starting here:
http://www.tinkertry.com/superguide...husiasts-colorful-variety-of-esxi-whiteboxes/
or
http://thehomeserverblog.com/category/esxi-whitebox-builds/

 

[mfenn]

I have a few more questions:

- About how many VMs are you looking to run at once?
- Are "server" features like IPMI and remote video important to you?
- Is uptime important (i.e., do you need hardware RAID)?

 

[phatDuck]

I have a few more questions:

- About how many VMs are you looking to run at once?
- Are "server" features like IPMI and remote video important to you?
- Is uptime important (i.e., do you need hardware RAID)?

I'll be running at least 4 VM all at the same time.
I don't need remote video.
RAID would be nice.

 

[crashtech]

I want to follow this thread. On the surface it would seem simple to spec out a C222 chipset motherboard, a Xeon E3-1231v3, and 16GB RAM with money left over to figure out a better storage system if the onboard one is not adequate.

 

[CoPhotoGuy]

I work for VMware, so feel free to ask me any questions.

While the whitebox builds aren't going to be supported I'm assuming you're doing this to learn.

What type of work/load do you want to do with the 4 VM's? You've got SSD so you can put swap on them if you needed to depending on how much memory you can afford to buy and what you will be assigning to the OS.

 

[mfenn]

OK, luckily you have all the peripherals, so we really only need to get the core components (CPU/mobo/RAM) and a storage controller on this budget.

Core i5 4590 $200
ASRock H97 Pro4 $84 - Intel NIC
Team DDR3 1600 16GB x2 $260
LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i $248 AP
SAS breakout cable $17
Total: $809

I went with the i5 plus consumer mobo instead of a Xeon plus server mobo because it has onboard video without being so expensive that you couldn't afford the RAID card. I think it's an acceptable tradeoff because raw CPU power isn't terribly important on a lab machine.

 

[phatDuck]

OK, luckily you have all the peripherals, so we really only need to get the core components (CPU/mobo/RAM) and a storage controller on this budget.

Core i5 4590 $200
ASRock H97 Pro4 $84 - Intel NIC
Team DDR3 1600 16GB x2 $260
LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i $248 AP
SAS breakout cable $17
Total: $809

I went with the i5 plus consumer mobo instead of a Xeon plus server mobo because it has onboard video without being so expensive that you couldn't afford the RAID card. I think it's an acceptable tradeoff because raw CPU power isn't terribly important on a lab machine.

awesome, reviewing the parts now.
quick question, what type of RAID would you suggest I run?
and how would someone that's building a lab box incorporate the 2 SSD drives with the other spinning drives?

 

[saratoga172]

awesome, reviewing the parts now.
quick question, what type of RAID would you suggest I run?
and how would someone that's building a lab box incorporate the 2 SSD drives with the other spinning drives?

With the SSD's you would run them in their own raid 1. The mechanical drives would be their own set of raid (assuming they are equal or close to equal specs) in a raid 5, 6, 10 (I'd do 10 personally if you have 4 or 6 drives), or any other raid you think fits your needs. Raid 10 will be the fastest and very redundant. Set of raid 0 mirrored in a raid 1. Raid 5, while not recommended in enterprise anymore, is still useful in home setups in my experience and one of the cheaper options since it only needs 3 drives but you get the space of 2. Slight read speed increase but nothing close to raid 10.

What type of redundancy vs space vs speed do you need? Also what type of failures can the environment withstand? Can you easily rebuild of having no raid and a drive go down? Backups? I'm assuming since you've thought of raid either you're looking to learn or don't want to have to mess with rebuilding.

 

[XavierMace]

Core i5 4590 $200
ASRock H97 Pro4 $84 - Intel NIC
Team DDR3 1600 16GB x2 $260
LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i $248 AP
SAS breakout cable $17
Total: $809

Alternatively he can get a LSI 9211-8 instead of the 9240-8 for $100 on ebay to get back to his budget goal.

OP, what are the VM's being used for? You mention they will be on all the time, so if these are going to be actively providing functionality for your network, then performance could be a concern.

 

[CoPhotoGuy]

If this is a lab just for messing around, you could do RAID 0 if you don't care about the VM's at all. If you need redundancy, RAID 5 should be fine.

I don't think you need to RAID the SSD's - use them for swap if you want or for a VM if you need a fast one.

We don't really know what you are doing with the system so making recommendations is hard.

For a lab, RAM is going to be more important than CPU if the VM's aren't going to be using CPU heavily. You will get much better performance if you don't have contention on RAM - a little CPU contention now and then probably won't be such a big deal - but if you run out of RAM and have to swap you can bring a host to its knees. This is why swapping to SSD can be a good thing, but ideally you don't to swap.

The memory tech is basically this in order from best to worst:

Transparent Page Sharing > Ballooning > Memory Compression > Swapping

FYI the VM's swap file will be created on power on and removed on power off and you need enough space to store it. It will be the size of the VM's unreserved memory.

Also, you want to take memory overhead into account. With 1vCPU and 4GB of RAM you are at ~50MB of RAM utilized for overhead. It will increase with more vCPU's added.

 

[phatDuck]

With the SSD's you would run them in their own raid 1. The mechanical drives would be their own set of raid (assuming they are equal or close to equal specs) in a raid 5, 6, 10 (I'd do 10 personally if you have 4 or 6 drives), or any other raid you think fits your needs. Raid 10 will be the fastest and very redundant. Set of raid 0 mirrored in a raid 1. Raid 5, while not recommended in enterprise anymore, is still useful in home setups in my experience and one of the cheaper options since it only needs 3 drives but you get the space of 2. Slight read speed increase but nothing close to raid 10.

What type of redundancy vs space vs speed do you need? Also what type of failures can the environment withstand? Can you easily rebuild of having no raid and a drive go down? Backups? I'm assuming since you've thought of raid either you're looking to learn or don't want to have to mess with rebuilding.

Thanks for all the input, I've built machines in the past but nothing in the past 5 years. I do know my way around OS's (Linux and win) but never did much with RAIDs. I do like the idea of running the SSD's in RAID 1 and the mechanical drives in a raid 5. Can I do this with the RAID card listed?
I'm looking for performance on the VM's.

Also what do you guys think of this deal?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboB...=Combo.2011374

I would add another 8GB of memory.
would be around $650 without the RAID card and cable.

 

[mfenn]

With the SSD's you would run them in their own raid 1. The mechanical drives would be their own set of raid (assuming they are equal or close to equal specs) in a raid 5, 6, 10 (I'd do 10 personally if you have 4 or 6 drives), or any other raid you think fits your needs. Raid 10 will be the fastest and very redundant. Set of raid 0 mirrored in a raid 1. Raid 5, while not recommended in enterprise anymore, is still useful in home setups in my experience and one of the cheaper options since it only needs 3 drives but you get the space of 2. Slight read speed increase but nothing close to raid 10.

What type of redundancy vs space vs speed do you need? Also what type of failures can the environment withstand? Can you easily rebuild of having no raid and a drive go down? Backups? I'm assuming since you've thought of raid either you're looking to learn or don't want to have to mess with rebuilding.

:thumbsup: Good advice

 

[mfenn]

Alternatively he can get a LSI 9211-8 instead of the 9240-8 for $100 on ebay to get back to his budget goal.

I thought about an MPT card like the 9211 but decided against it because he might want to run RAID5 on his HDDs for capacity.

 

[mfenn]

Thanks for all the input, I've built machines in the past but nothing in the past 5 years. I do know my way around OS's (Linux and win) but never did much with RAIDs. I do like the idea of running the SSD's in RAID 1 and the mechanical drives in a raid 5. Can I do this with the RAID card listed?
I'm looking for performance on the VM's.

Yes, a MegaRAID can do lots of different RAID sets and then slice virtual disks up on top of those. 16 or 32 RAID sets I think?

Also what do you guys think of this deal?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboB...=Combo.2011374

I would add another 8GB of memory.
would be around $650 without the RAID card and cable.

That's not a great deal. If you apply all the discount to the really overpriced motherboard, you still end up with it costing $130. The whole kit would cost you $900 with half the RAM and a more powerful CPU (which is irrelevant).

 

[XavierMace]

I thought about an MPT card like the 9211 but decided against it because he might want to run RAID5 on his HDDs for capacity.

Fair enough.