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ESXi for Home

D

DlStreamnet

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 10, 2005
Messages
359
Looking to purchase:

Intel Xeon 1230
Intel BOXDQ67SWB3 (Cheaper, integrated Intel Gigabit)
Kingston HyperX 4x4GB 1600Mhz
I need to do VT-D to pass disk IO as Im running a file server @ hopefully 100MB/s

Running ESXi5. Many thanks.

Also, where can i install ESXi? Only 4 sata ports, don't really want to use a HDD.

To run a ZFS software raid, could I later add a HP 8 port SAS controller? Or should I do this now?
 
Last edited:
What do you suggest?

Maybe an intel atom/fusion based system purely for presenting the storage?

At present I can hit 90Mb/s with big files using an E5200 pentium/1gb ram.
 
It depends on whether you want an all-in-one solution (ESXi, VTd, ZFS) or a separate NAS and ESX box.
I have a NAS system that serves my TB's over NFS to a diskless ESX whitebox.

You can hit 100MB/s easily with a Brazos based NAS. Brazos+LSI2008+mdadm = score.
Don't forget IOPs too if you want to do some serious playing on your ESX system.
 
SantaSCSI said:
It depends on whether you want an all-in-one solution (ESXi, VTd, ZFS) or a separate NAS and ESX box.
I have a NAS system that serves my TB's over NFS to a diskless ESX whitebox.

You can hit 100MB/s easily with a Brazos based NAS. Brazos+LSI2008+mdadm = score.
Don't forget IOPs too if you want to do some serious playing on your ESX system.
Click to expand...

Ideally an all in one solution with either the X3 mentioned in the OP, or maybe an i5 2500.

The WHS install at present is perfect in the sense that it handles 100Mb/s with the direct attached storage, however I want ESXi, and the same 100MBs

If this can be achieved using the i5 or x3 for example, I would prefer an all in one solution.
 
I don't think you can do passthrough with an X3. If you want decent performance on your all-in-one, you need to pass your disks directly to the VM. This is possible on the i5 and Xeon with VTd and Opteron with IOMMU. Performance will be mediocre at best if you don't.
 
Updated OP, going to go with a new build.

Less than £400 if possible utilising my existing case and possibly hard disks.
 
SantaSCSI said:
I don't think you can do passthrough with an X3. If you want decent performance on your all-in-one, you need to pass your disks directly to the VM. This is possible on the i5 and Xeon with VTd and Opteron with IOMMU. Performance will be mediocre at best if you don't.
Click to expand...

All AMD Chips support VTd and IOMMU (or whatever AMD calls them). It's Intel that disables features on their low end and enthusiast chips.

I am using all of the hardware virtualization features on the ESX server in my sig. passthrough for some of my storage disks, vmdirectpath for video card, sound card and usb controller. I actually just upgraded the X3 to an X6.

With AMD chips all that matters for Virtualization support is your motherboard, so don't skimp on that. I currently have the Gigabyte 990fxa-ud3 and it supports all of those features.

In fact, all AMD chips can use ECC ram too, as long as the mobo supports it.
 
Bit the bullet and ordered:

Intel Xeon 1230
Intel BOXDQ67SWB3
Kingston HyperX (4x4GB)

I was planning on upgrading to the Xeon anyway, so I thought I cannot afford to be cheap and got it from the outset.
 
deltronik said:
All AMD Chips support VTd and IOMMU (or whatever AMD calls them). It's Intel that disables features on their low end and enthusiast chips.

I am using all of the hardware virtualization features on the ESX server in my sig. passthrough for some of my storage disks, vmdirectpath for video card, sound card and usb controller. I actually just upgraded the X3 to an X6.

With AMD chips all that matters for Virtualization support is your motherboard, so don't skimp on that. I currently have the Gigabyte 990fxa-ud3 and it supports all of those features.

In fact, all AMD chips can use ECC ram too, as long as the mobo supports it.
Click to expand...

I have the 1055t with a asrock ext3 MB and it has IOMMU on it. I need to load esxi and try it out. I thought that the CPU needed to have the VT-D or AMD-V extension for it to be useable for passthrough?
 
Hagrid said:
I have the 1055t with a asrock ext3 MB and it has IOMMU on it. I need to load esxi and try it out. I thought that the CPU needed to have the VT-D or AMD-V extension for it to be useable for passthrough?
Click to expand...

With AMD, most of the CPUs support virtualization, which by default enables them to use IOMMU. But IOMMU capabilities is determined by the chipset. If I'm not mistaken, the 890FX, 970, and 990 chipsets are the only ones that support IOMMU.
 
deltronik said:
All AMD Chips support VTd and IOMMU (or whatever AMD calls them). It's Intel that disables features on their low end and enthusiast chips.

I am using all of the hardware virtualization features on the ESX server in my sig. passthrough for some of my storage disks, vmdirectpath for video card, sound card and usb controller. I actually just upgraded the X3 to an X6.

With AMD chips all that matters for Virtualization support is your motherboard, so don't skimp on that. I currently have the Gigabyte 990fxa-ud3 and it supports all of those features.

In fact, all AMD chips can use ECC ram too, as long as the mobo supports it.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the wrong information. Looks like my thoughts were wrong. Sorry :).
 
shiznit said:
Install ESXi to a 2Gb usb stick.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have mine installed inside the case connected to a pci slot USB adapter that plugs into a USB header on the mobo. I just took apart the PCI bracket and ended up with 2 seperate usb tales that connect to the mobo header and stay inside the case. I actually not only boot ESXi from a USB drive, but a couple of my VMs too.
 
When ESXi gets installed on a USB stick, then you need to present it with some other storage location for VMs. With mine, I have a local HDD, just for storing ISO's and VM configs. I have a separate datastore created from a FreeNAS server for the VMDK s for my VMs.
 
Is there any benefit from booting ESXi from a USB, and keeping the data store on another drive?

Why not just install the ESXi on the hard drive where the data stores are?
 
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