VMware ESXi *Free*!

[Chiropteran]

A week ago VMware released ESXi for free for commercial use.

I've been playing around with it here at work, it's pretty easy to set up and use *if* you have supported hardware. In particular, it's very picky about storage controllers, it only seems to work with SAS or SATA Raid cards, doesn't seem to recognize any of the onboard SATA chipsets I have tried.

I'm actually having so much fun messing around with it at work that I am thinking about building or buying a server for home that I can install it on.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Did you try with something like the P35 chipset with the ICH9 / ICH9R or similar controllers?

How's the CPU / I/O / NET performance been for you versus what you'd expect under an OS?

I've been wondering if it'd work well with the Silicon Labs SATA chips like the 3132 or 3124 or
similar since there are plenty of inexpensive ($24-$50ish) multi-port or multi-lane
(well 4-5 disks / card anyway) cards out there using similar series of chips.

Moving up from there, the SAS controller model LSI 3442ER controller seems to be
well commended for use in Solaris anyway, and I'd assume that it'd likely be compatible
with ESXi given that it's from such a major manufacturer in the business class storage field
and is apparently a popular value choice in the $130-$250 range.

Hopefully at least a few well performing inexpensive multi-port JBOD mode SAS or SATA
controllers are supported.

I've been curious to try ESXi, though the lack of decent (any advanced) GPU support in the
host or guests kind of makes it less appealing if I'd have to dedicate a machine which happens
to have a high end GPU to using it.

Ideally I'd be able to do GPGPU stuff in either the host or guest though to do that effectively
in the guest is impossible for any current VM AFAIK, and for it to work on the host OS I'd
have to run VMware Server or VirtualBox or so on hosted by LINUX or Windows instead.

The other thing that sort of keeps me questioning the use of ESXi or similar is that ideally I'd like to have a storage server hosted on the same server box, but from what little I've
heard the network and GB-ethernet I/O performance can be pretty bad compared to running
a direct server OS, thus making me think it'd be less than ideal for hosting a primary file server.

It'd be good for a lot of other things, though... hmmm.. must resist buying another machine....

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: Chiropteran
A week ago VMware released ESXi for free for commercial use.

I've been playing around with it here at work, it's pretty easy to set up and use *if* you have supported hardware. In particular, it's very picky about storage controllers, it only seems to work with SAS or SATA Raid cards, doesn't seem to recognize any of the onboard SATA chipsets I have tried.

I'm actually having so much fun messing around with it at work that I am thinking about building or buying a server for home that I can install it on.

Can this be installed on a USB thumb drive or other flash device? Seems silly to dedicate a multi-gigabyte HDD to a 32MB install.

Nathan

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: NTB
Can this be installed on a USB thumb drive or other flash device? Seems silly to dedicate a multi-gigabyte HDD to a 32MB install.

Nathan

It can be, but it sounds like you misunderstand the use of it.

A hyperviser isn't an OS really, it's just a small bit of code that virtualizes and partitions your hardware. By itself, it is worthless- it is only useful if you install at least one, preferably multiple virtual OSes on top of it.

For example, at work we have a server with about 900GB of HD space. We will install ESXi onto it first, and then dedicate portions of that disk space for each VM- maybe 80GB for a basic Server 2003 install, maybe one larger VM for a fileserver at 300GB, maybe a Windows Vista Business VM at 120GB setup for software testing, etc. That is why you need a big disk. If you just install ESXi on a 1GB flash drive you won't have any room for any virtual machines.

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
Did you try with something like the P35 chipset with the ICH9 / ICH9R or similar controllers?

How's the CPU / I/O / NET performance been for you versus what you'd expect under an OS?

I tried a P965 chipset board, I'm not sure if we have anything with a P35 but I'll continue to experiment until I find something cheap that works.

I haven't done any testing or benchmarking yet, but just based on the "feel" going from Windows Server 2008 installed on bare metal to Server 2008 installed on top of ESXi, there is zero difference in feel when accessing it over the network through remote desktop. I'd like to test with 4-5 instances of 2008 Server running on the same hardware, but the hardware we are testing on now only has a 90GB hard drive- I am going to look into upgrading that soon. I can easily test file transfer speed over the network, if I'm not too busy I'll test that on Monday and let you know.

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
Moving up from there, the SAS controller model LSI 3442ER controller seems to be
well commended for use in Solaris anyway, and I'd assume that it'd likely be compatible
with ESXi given that it's from such a major manufacturer in the business class storage field
and is apparently a popular value choice in the $130-$250 range.

Sounds like something that would work. The Dell servers we have tested with ESXi use LSI based raid controllers, so I know at least some of them will work.

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
I've been curious to try ESXi, though the lack of decent (any advanced) GPU support in the
host or guests kind of makes it less appealing if I'd have to dedicate a machine which happens
to have a high end GPU to using it.

Here is the thing, with ESXi the host computer is basically useless by itself. You can't do much of anything on the host console, it is all remote management. So if you just have a single PC, it's not of much use. And yes, any graphic hardware in the host is just going to be wasted.

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
The other thing that sort of keeps me questioning the use of ESXi or similar is that ideally I'd like to have a storage server hosted on the same server box, but from what little I've
heard the network and GB-ethernet I/O performance can be pretty bad compared to running
a direct server OS, thus making me think it'd be less than ideal for hosting a primary file server.

The impression I have so far is that there isn't much of a penalty, but rather than base everything of "feel" I'll do some real tests and let you know.

 

[SolMiester]

I have several ESX3.5 hosts at work with MSA50 DAS storage and yes we even have a file server hosted.....I think with ESX1, you dont need local HDD for the ESX1 o/s, however you do need remote storage, either SAN, iSCSI or FC for the datastores....I dont, which is why we havent change to ESXi

 

[quikah]

Originally posted by: SolMiester
I have several ESX3.5 hosts at work with MSA50 DAS storage and yes we even have a file server hosted.....I think with ESX1, you dont need local HDD for the ESX1 o/s, however you do need remote storage, either SAN, iSCSI or FC for the datastores....I dont, which is why we havent change to ESXi

You can use local attached storage for datastores with ESXi also.

 

[tfinch2]

Originally posted by: quikah

Originally posted by: SolMiester
I have several ESX3.5 hosts at work with MSA50 DAS storage and yes we even have a file server hosted.....I think with ESX1, you dont need local HDD for the ESX1 o/s, however you do need remote storage, either SAN, iSCSI or FC for the datastores....I dont, which is why we havent change to ESXi

You can use local attached storage for datastores with ESXi also.

Correct. Also, if you are going to install ESXi on a thumb drive, make sure you do it on a drive that does wear levelling and has decent performance.