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Advice on home build

A

ashman

Gawd
Joined
Mar 28, 2011
Messages
811
I currently have two older Dell PE 2900's that comprise my virtual environment at home, both for my production and testing. I am trying to get my power bill down and I am considering replacing the two PE 2900's with one single white box with an AMD Bulldozer CPU, some drives, 32GB's of RAM etc. What I have now with the two Dell's is really overkill for what I could build in a whitebox, so i am just looking for your thoughts. Both Dell's have dual CPU's, three drives in RAID 5, one has an LTO 3 tape drive, both have dual power supplies. I know the Bulldozer CPU's are power hungry, but I figure going from two servers with dual CPU's down to one box with one CPU ought to reduce my power consumption by three quarters. What do you guys think?
 
I'd probably go with a 6100 chip over a 6200 chip but that sounds like a great setup. One suggestion is go for 8GB ticks instead of 4GB ones, it'll let you move to 64GB in the future. Those 2900s are netburst xeons and that's all that needs to be said about those!

I am assuming you would get a G34 box and not a C32 box.
 
Granted anything will draw less power than dual 2900's but if power is your primary concern you should give Intel a look. There is nothing wrong with AMD but Intel certainly has the power advantage. An i7 2600 or an i5 2500 or the 1230 Xeon are all excellent choices.
 
Thanks, had a look at that Intel board, nice, except the onboard LAN is not currently supported under ESXi 5. I can always stick a LAN card in, not really a problem.
 
That is the exact board I am using and it is great with a couple minor exceptions. As you noted the NIC is not supported out of the box but does work with Chilly's drivers or you can simply add a NIC and be done (which is what I chose to do and now only use the onboard NIC for VPro AMT) the other downside is the lack of PCI-e lanes / slots which may or may not be an issue depending on what you want to do.

What many people don't realize is that vPro allows you nearly all the functionality of IPMI including KVM functionality and mounting of virtual discs using Real VNC Viewer Plus.
 
Thanks for the heads up on Real VNC Viewer Plus. I had been looking into an ipkvm setup for my home network but the price was prohibitive. I am going to test it out as it seems to meet my needs at an affordable price.
 
I am actually building a box with this Intel board and a i7 2500 so I'll let you know shortly.

AM
 
bcorneau said:
hi
Did anybody try this config ???
If yes does VT-d FT etc work

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Practical RAM limitation on that board is 16GB, just so ya aren't caught unawares. (4x4GB) Don't know if you need the 32GB or not.
 
Never mind I was having a 'moment' all good, install is underway.
 
Last edited:
This might sound crazy but is the voltage setting on the PS set to 240V? When you plug the cord into the PS does the PS spin up at all?
 
the spec said

Memory: 4x 240pin DDR3-1333/1066 DIMMs, Dual Channel, Non ECC, Max Capacity upto 32GB
 
bcorneau said:
hi
Did anybody try this config ???
If yes does VT-d FT etc work

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I run the i7-2600 on that board.
Never tried FT under ESXi but VT-d under XenClient works.for GPU. Have not tried any add-in cards.

TeeJayHoward said:
Practical RAM limitation on that board is 16GB, just so ya aren't caught unawares. (4x4GB) Don't know if you need the 32GB or not.
Click to expand...

If you are referring to the DQ67SWB3 motherboard, it handles up to 32GB (4x8GB).
 
TeeJayHoward said:
Practical RAM limitation on that board is 16GB, just so ya aren't caught unawares. (4x4GB) Don't know if you need the 32GB or not.
Click to expand...
No! - 32 GB is easily and economically accomplished with four 8 GB DDR3 sticks. That is what I am running.
 
Ya I have ESXi installed, 32GB of RAM visible and working, installed ESXi onto a 30GB SSD, all is good, added a 1.5TB drive onto local SATA for data store, ghetto I know, but its all I need for now.
I have two PCIx intel gigabit network cards as well as an Adaptec 29320 controller for my external LTO 2 tape drive.
Four x 8GB G Skill memory modules working great.
 
Last edited:
Martian said:
No! - 32 GB is easily and economically accomplished with four 8 GB DDR3 sticks. That is what I am running.
Click to expand...
8GB DDR3 ECC RAM is running around $300/stick.

edit: And then my brain returns to me. DESKTOP board. Nevermind.
 
In case i missed something, what was the fix to get power going to the system?
 
Netwerkz101 said:
I run the i7-2600 on that board.
Never tried FT under ESXi but VT-d under XenClient works.for GPU. Have not tried any add-in cards.



If you are referring to the DQ67SWB3 motherboard, it handles up to 32GB (4x8GB).
Click to expand...

One thing to note, if you are intent to play around with FT, make sure your CPU is among those listed here:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...nguage=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1008027

I have got a i7-2600 too, the furthest I can go with FT is a working FT-enabled 32-bit VM hosted on a cluster of 4 virtualised ESXi 5.0 hosts. :D
 
Just me not reading how to plug in the connections for the Power Switch etc from the case, stupid stuff, I was tired.
 
So this is my build:

Cooler Master Elite 310 case
Seasonic SS-500ET 500W 80 PLUS BRONZE Power Supply
Intel DQ67SW board
Intel i7 2600
4xGSkill 8GB DDR 3 1333 memory modules
Two Intel Gigabit desktop adapter network cards
Adaptec 29320LP scsi LVD controller connected to external LTO 2 tape drive
OCZ 30GB SSD for ESXi
2TB WD Green drive for local data store
500GB Seagate drive for additional data store

Everything is working great, migrating my VM's off my PE 2900's at the moment. I know its a huge step down from my PE 2900's, I know I have no raid, performance will undoubtedly be impacted as a result, however I backup my VM's using Veeam every night, so I am protected somewhat.

Thanks for the recommendations on the Intel board and CPU.
 
jarxale


I like to know if you were able to make everything work FT , VT-D.

Can you post some picture of vsphere client (summary screen of the host).
And by the way if everything is working, you will be the only one i found that his setup is low cost and can make FT VT-D run with also 32g of ram.

Thanks ;)
 
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