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VMWARE ESX BUILD

N

nukleuz

Golden Member

I'm looking to build an esx server for my lab at home for testing purposes,i have a budget of $1200 and was looking for your help in building one up on www.newegg.com or any other cheaper sites to get the hardware for it
I already have 2x1Tb drives.everything else i have to buy

this is what i built on dell's site but doesnt look too good

467-4248 Core 2 Duo E6305, 1.86GHz, 2MBCache, 1066MHz Front Side Bus for PowerEdge R300
1 311-8351 512MB DDR2, 667MHz, 1x512MB Single Ranked DIMMs
1 320-6326 Riser with 2 Slots: 2 PCI Exprx8 slots
1 341-6880 80GB 7.2K RPM Serial ATA 3Gbps3.5-in Cabled Hard Drive
1 420-6320 No Operating System
1 430-2008 On-Board Dual Gigabit Network Adapter
1 313-6116 8X DVD-ROM Drive, Internal SATA
1 313-6114 Bezel
1 330-0309 Chassis with Cabled Hard Driveand Non-Redundant Power Supplyfor PowerEdge R300
1 330-0312 Electronic Documentation and OpenManage DVD Kit
1 341-6880 80GB 7.2K RPM Serial ATA 3Gbps3.5-in Cabled Hard Drive
1 341-6341 Add-in SAS6iR RAID Controller (SATA/SAS Controller) which supports 2 Hard Drives - RAID 1
1 341-3089 No Rack Rails Included, 1U
1 310-8509 Power Cord, NEMA 5-15P to C14,15 amp, wall plug, 10 feet / 3 meter
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
A quick google implies you do need SCSI, but you might be able to buy something used much cheaper from eBay or Dell's outlet.

esx test server
Click to expand...

i'd rather build one as even the one's on dell's or ebay are expensive and i know i can use SAS for the sata and it should work
oh and i have been googling as well but need more input

thanks
 
Not even close to enough RAM. ESX really isnt compatible with much, and for stability purposes I would really get one from Dell and just add your own drives and memory.
 
I replied in your other same-titled topic posted in the Computer Help forum, so you may want to read what I posted. Thoughts from what I've read in this topic:

Your parts summary lacks crucial information to determine compatibility. For instance, you have a dual gigabit networking adapter included, but no information on the make or model of said NICs, or the the motherboard that they are included with, which might have led us in the right direction. As such, you can not be in anyway positive that these NICs will work under ESX.

My motherboard on my ESX box has two integrated gigabit NICs by Marvell, which are unusable under ESX, as they lack the driver support. The box wasn't originally built with ESX in mind, so I adapted it, and in the process had to buy 3 x Intel PRO/1000 NICs based on the e1000 chipset that do work with ESX.

The RAID controller is listed as SAS6iR, which a quick search for seems to suggest is a proprietary Dell RAID controller. I did a quick search and found a single post on the vm-help HCL list that suggested that it does work, but nothing conclusive whatsoever, and once again, there's no chipset information which makes conclusively determining compatibility very difficult.

4GB of RAM is pretty reasonable, provided you don't intend to run lots of concurrent VM's, ESXi will burn through 512MB easily before running any VM's, and ESX will burn through more than that, though I couldn't say how much more. Your CPU I would suggest is passable, and should do the trick, once again, provided you aren't running lots of concurrent VM's and/or putting heavy load on several VM's.

I can't stress this enough, you _MUST_ verify hardware compatibility for all relevant components or you risk being very disappointed and very pissed off when you've spent several hundred or thousand dollars on equipment only to find it doesn't work. ESX has very limited hardware compatibility, so you can't make any assumptions that your equipment will "just work", and that extends even to expensive high-end equipment.

Building an ESX server for cheap is possible, but just remember you get what you pay for, and if you're intending to turn this into a production server running several VM's, you may well run into trouble. Factor in expansion potential as more VM's are added and load on VM's increases as well, and you'll realise that depending on your aims, buying cheap may not be in your best interests, at least, not in the long term.

DaveSimmons: SCSI isn't really a requirement, in that it can run on SATA fine, though I believe this is unsupported and requires some tweaking. Realistically, you'll want a RAID setup backed by SATA/SAS/SCSI disks.
 
i want to build a virtualization box as well...am i thinking overkill as far as virtualization goes or something? I want a Q6600 and 8GB RAM (i want to use Xen on CentOS as my hypervisor, as opposed to ESXi)

also, right now in the outlet is a better equipped T300 for $899. outlet inventory changes fast though, but still, you didnt list what that config runs and that gives you an idea of whats in the outlet. dunno whether they ever have coupons for poweredge stuff in the outlet though.
 
the poweredge T300 wont be able to run ESX and this build is meant for a test box for pbx in a flash ,WHS ,redhat enterprise and server 2008 for now.I checked the refurb outlet and got a poweredge 2900 with better specs and cheaper so i think i'll settle for that for now until i'm ready for production 🙂
 
I would be afraid to use anything but the box we use at work for an ESX server, im way too spoiled. Quad Dual Core Xeon 3.2GHz (8 Cores), 24GB RAM, little under 1 TB of storage space, all redundant in a ProLiant DL580 Gen 4. It packs a punch, currently running 15 simultaneous VMs and overall CPU usage is at about 15%, and overall memory is at about a third used. If I ever made an ESX server at home it would seem very sluggush to me compared. Good luck getting yours going, it looks like you have a decent start going though ESX server is a huge hog when you get a few going at once and you need a beast of a machine to keep them all happy.
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
A quick google implies you do need SCSI, but you might be able to buy something used much cheaper from eBay or Dell's outlet.

esx test server
Click to expand...

If you look here: Supported I/O

ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 support Intel ICH-7 SATA I/O
... apparently SCSI isn't required. I wouldn't put too much faith in PATA, however 🙂
 
xSauronx: I wouldn't call it overkill, but it depends on what kind of load you're intending to put on the box. I think the Q6600 is a very good choice, it's something of a sweetspot as far as Intel quad-cores go, a nice balance between performance and value. The 8GB of RAM may be overkill depending on how many VM's you're intending to run and the load per respective VM. I'll give you an idea though of memory usage from my experience: I have an ESXi box running 4 VM's, with 2GB/1GB/1GB/512MB memory assigned to each VM respectively, and total memory usage usually hovers between 4 and 4.5GB. This is total memory consumption across the entire server. You could get away with 4GB easily depending on your workload, but 8GB may be the wiser choice if you're going to put heavier demands on the box.

Paperlantern: The thing is, most people running home ESX servers aren't running 15 simultaneous VM's. 😉 I'm running a Q9450 with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB RAID-5 array backed by an Adaptec 3405 dedicated adapter. The machine is definitely not sluggish, it absolutely flies. With my 4 VM's with varying amounts of load, CPU utilization usually averages 10%.
 
For home use I would consider building one yourself. I would never, ever recommend this in a corporate environment but when it's your own money and your own system it makes sense.

My home ESXi box consists of:

ASUS P5Q Deluxe
Q6600, 8 GB RAM
USB header flash drive for ESXi install
Dell PERC 5/i connected to 5 in 3 SAS/SATA enclosure (three drives currently)
Dell PERC 5/e connected to external enclosure with 8x320 GB SATA in RAID 50
Intel PRO/1000 PCIe
A dual port Pro/100 for non bandwidth intensive needs

Since you're going lighter on storage and you already have RAM you should be able to come in WAY under budget. As others have said 4 GB is pretty much bare minimum, so you'll want to pick up another 4. Also consider more hard drives - VM performance is heavily disk limited.

Viper GTS
 
Originally posted by: ralish
xSauronx: I wouldn't call it overkill, but it depends on what kind of load you're intending to put on the box. I think the Q6600 is a very good choice, it's something of a sweetspot as far as Intel quad-cores go, a nice balance between performance and value. The 8GB of RAM may be overkill depending on how many VM's you're intending to run and the load per respective VM.
Click to expand...

my intent in running a hypervisor is to run as many as 4 VMs at once. I want some exposure and experience with server operating systems (and virtualization), as well as a dedicated server box at home, which I dont have right now.

I want to run server 2008, vista or xp as a client, a linux server, and a linux desktop install (that may or may not get regular use as a desktop). 8gb may be overkill, and i could start with 4 and see how it goes. initially the load wont be very high, so I could always upgrade later if I need it.
 
Originally posted by: xSauronx
Originally posted by: ralish
xSauronx: I wouldn't call it overkill, but it depends on what kind of load you're intending to put on the box. I think the Q6600 is a very good choice, it's something of a sweetspot as far as Intel quad-cores go, a nice balance between performance and value. The 8GB of RAM may be overkill depending on how many VM's you're intending to run and the load per respective VM.
Click to expand...

my intent in running a hypervisor is to run as many as 4 VMs at once. I want some exposure and experience with server operating systems (and virtualization), as well as a dedicated server box at home, which I dont have right now.

I want to run server 2008, vista or xp as a client, a linux server, and a linux desktop install (that may or may not get regular use as a desktop). 8gb may be overkill, and i could start with 4 and see how it goes. initially the load wont be very high, so I could always upgrade later if I need it.
Click to expand...

4 GB kits go for what, $40 these days? Max out the board now.

Viper GTS
 
In your case, I'd probably just go the full 8GB now that I have a better idea of how you plan to utilise your server.

Let's take a "minimalist" memory construction, a basic idea of the amount of memory each component on your server will likely consume:
Hypervisor: 512MB
Server 2008: 1GB
Vista: 1GB
Linux Server: 512MB
Linux Desktop: 512MB

The above estimates that the hypervisor itself (including base OS) will consume 512MB on its own accord before you even get any VM's started. Then, we assign what I would call the "realistic minimum" amount of memory to each VM according to the OS it will be running. You could assign less, but performance would likely suffer; you're far more likely to want to assign more now or in the future as the role(s) of the VM's change, not to mention accomodating future and more resource intensive operating systems. Add it all up, and you've hit 3.5GB. This estimate does not include additional hypervisor related overhead for each VM (ie. the VM might be assigned 1GB of memory, but may take 1.2GB due to the hypervisor related overhead of actually emulating the virtual system). Overall, you're left with very little room for expansion.

I think the deal breaker here is that memory right now is dirt cheap. I'm in Australia, and you can get 8GB of high-quality DDR2 PC2-6400 memory in 4x2GB modules for around the $200AUD mark, and you being in America, I suspect you can get such memory for significantly cheaper. If overclocking is of no interest to you, and this being a server, it definitely shouldn't be, you may well be able to get 8GB for around the $100USD mark. Memory prices are more likely to go up than down in the future, so you may as well capitalise on this as it seems to me you have a high potential of actually requiring such a large amount of RAM for a sensible use.
 
Originally posted by: Viper GTS
Originally posted by: xSauronx
Originally posted by: ralish
xSauronx: I wouldn't call it overkill, but it depends on what kind of load you're intending to put on the box. I think the Q6600 is a very good choice, it's something of a sweetspot as far as Intel quad-cores go, a nice balance between performance and value. The 8GB of RAM may be overkill depending on how many VM's you're intending to run and the load per respective VM.
Click to expand...

my intent in running a hypervisor is to run as many as 4 VMs at once. I want some exposure and experience with server operating systems (and virtualization), as well as a dedicated server box at home, which I dont have right now.

I want to run server 2008, vista or xp as a client, a linux server, and a linux desktop install (that may or may not get regular use as a desktop). 8gb may be overkill, and i could start with 4 and see how it goes. initially the load wont be very high, so I could always upgrade later if I need it.
Click to expand...

4 GB kits go for what, $40 these days? Max out the board now.

Viper GTS
Click to expand...

see thats kinda what i was thinking at first: ram is dirt cheap.

hell, storage is cheap, too, and after reading your post i realized i hadnt considered multiple hard drives...

ill have funds in february, so ill work out the details then and see what kind of build i can do 🙂
 
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