First test lab configuration question

[Shadowhaxor]

I've been dealing with Virtualization at the company I work at for the past 4-5 years now, mainly with Virtuozzo, Vmware, MS Virtual PC and Virtual Server. I had the chance to take the VMware fasttrack class sine my company provided me with it so I can eventually take the VMware VCP exam. However even though I do a lot of the virtualization support work in my department I really don't have a test lab at home.

So I've put up about $600 to start a test lab and I'm setting up a little room in my house into my office since my current office turned into the family room and I can't leave my tech in there... my kids will kill it.

So I've been looking at a Dell Poweredge 2850 over at geeks.com;

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2850-XEON32X2-7R&cat=SVR

Not sure if I can do ESXi 5 on it but I know it will handle ESXi 3.5 - 4 just fine. Question is does anyone have this setup running or have tried it in the past? I'm trying to gauge performance on it as I'm going to be setting up 4-5 VM's on it for testing and live production.

Thanks in advance.

 

[NetJunkie]

Should run ESXi 5 but those are single core CPUs. I wouldn't do that. Not to mention loud if you aren't going to dedicate space to a rack.

 

[Vader]

I would not waste my $ on a 2850. Besides the points that NetJunkie mentioned..it's just old tech, heck, even a 2950 or a couple of 1950's would be better, though, still loud, and even that's still 3 generations old.

What is it you want to do with the $600 specifically:
1. How many ESXi Hosts?
2. Shared storage?
3. Manged network switch?

 

[Shadowhaxor]

I would not waste my $ on a 2850. Besides the points that NetJunie mentioned..it's just old tech, heck, even a 2950 or a couple of 1950's would be better, though, still loud, and even that's still 3 generations old.

What is it you want to do with the $600 specifically:
1. How many ESXi Hosts?
2. Shared storage?
3. Manged network switch?

Looking at 1-2 Hosts for now, storage will be handled locally for the time being however will be moving them off to a NAS (FreeNas / Drobo FS). No managed switching at the start.

But thanks for the heads up. If they're single core cpu's then that's a waste of time.

Oh well.

 

[D-EJ915]

If you want an actual-manufacturer rackmount you could snag a Dell 2970 with 2 AMD quads and 8GB memory for $300 on ebay. Registered DDR2 is a lot cheaper than FB-DIMMs that the Intels use.

 

[Shadowhaxor]

If you want an actual-manufacturer rackmount you could snag a Dell 2970 with 2 AMD quads and 8GB memory for $300 on ebay. Registered DDR2 is a lot cheaper than FB-DIMMs that the Intels use.

Thanks for the idea. I think I should elaborate some more to get some more ideas. That and a huge issue on part my is I always want to do it big the first time which isn't going to fly with my budget atm.

My main goal is two fold; To replace my Frankenstein server and virtualize it via VMware Converter and to have a functioning test lab. I don't need all the bell's and whistle's and will want to start small and work my way up. I looked at the 2850 cause it was cheap though fully expecting to change it out later on.

I also noted some decently equipped Dell 1950's on Ebay for a song so I put in a bid for 2 of them hoping that I'd win one. I also can get a hold of a Dell 840R with 8GB of Ram, a quad core xeon (Intel Xeon X3210) and 2x250 drives for less than $200.00 That would give me 4 cores (8 logical cores) so I should have enough power for the VM's I plan on running.

Storage-wise I'm still undecided on going wit a Drobo, Iomega, Synology or building a FreeNas box. That combined with the pricing of harddrives still up there will likely eat into my budget.

VM guest-wise I'm looking at 3-4 VM's with a AD network to connect the rest of my machines in the house, a CentOS box, a Windows Home Server and likely another Linux server.

Still not sure on the switching though I figured I'd cross that bridge when I need to. Nice thing about it is I have some help with the VCP's at my job (Still pissed I failed my exam by 30 points)

Of course I'll be looking to add a more robust server down the road but this is just to get me started now. I put this off way to long.

 

[Vader]

I think you have a decent plan overall. You can still run a single box solution on free ESXi and run the 60 day evals on ESXi Virtual Guests giving you the functionality to train/test. You will need additional memory for this, however, and if you run FreeNAS or OI w/Nappit as a guest, you wouldn't need to add additional network capacity. This is the way I ran for a while and it worked great.

 

[Shadowhaxor]

I think you have a decent plan overall. You can still run a single box solution on free ESXi and run the 60 day evals on ESXi Virtual Guests giving you the functionality to train/test. You will need additional memory for this, however, and if you run FreeNAS or OI w/Nappit as a guest, you wouldn't need to add additional network capacity. This is the way I ran for a while and it worked great.

Yah the way it's going I'm just going to get that Dell Poweredge 840 and start from there, that way I can save some money and get the storage sorted out. Not sure if I'll want to run FreeNas as a guest but then again it never crossed my mind. How much storage were you running and could you elaborate as to how you had it configured?

 

[Vader]

I built out very similiar to this setup: http://vinf.net/2011/05/27/vtardis-next-runs-on-vsphere-5-0/

I did not run stateless, however. Also, look at his original vtardis setup to understand the network config etc. While ESXi 4.x allowed you to run ESXi guests, you couldn't run 64bit nested guests under those hosts. ESXi 5 will allow you run nested 64bit guests, however, there is change that you need to do to allow this. Go here for that change:

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/07/how-to-enable-support-for-nested-64bit.html

Now, some may come on here...and say..."this is too much work, you don't want to do this" blah, blah, blah. The truth is, not everyone has the funds for an all out lab. it took me two years to get more than 1 host, a nice NAS, and a managed switch, the latter of which I just purchased. In that time, however, and with the single box, I was able to train and go through my VCP4 cert..etc with very little limitations, on top of that, running the VM's I wanted to run for the house. While i'm not saying you can get all the functionality, for instance EVC enabled clusters, power management, you still can get 99% functionality out of it if you set it up correctly, especially with vSphere 5.

 

[Shadowhaxor]

I ended up picking up a Supermicro 1U server with (2) Intel quad core processors (INTEL XEON L5420) and 8GB of memory (DDR2) for a steal. So now that let's me mount my drives into my previous / current server and install FreeNas on it for my NAS.

Can't wait!

 

[Vader]

Sounds good! Let us know your progress.

 

[Shadowhaxor]

I've been busy as of lately but I finally had some time the past weekend to finally put some time into my test lab. I got the server up and running with ESXi 5 running off a usb flash drive, leaving me with 2TB to use for local storage.

I didn't leave the info on the server before, so here it is;

Super Micro X7DVL-L
(2) Intel Xeon L5420 (sadly no HT)
8GB DDR2 EEC, looking to get 8 more for a total of 16GB.
2TB Local storage

So now I just need to figure out if I want to use FreeNas or pick up a 2 bay Qnap or Synology. The wife already gave me the go ahead to pick up either or by adding some more money into the mix. Though I'll likely end up going through that money getting the additional memory.... blasted EEC memory.

Sucks I'm limited as I have the free hyper-visor license, but it's better than nothing.

 

[calikool]

I saw a server that was on ebay that was very similar to what you purchased. The main difference was that it came with 1 x 250GB drive. Perhaps they have some 1TB drives laying around.

 

[Shadowhaxor]

Yes, mine only came with a 250GB drive however I swapped that out.

 

[calikool]

I suppose you could buy another one of these supermicros and then you can use vmotion.

How loud is this server. I was thinking of buying two of these since it was cheap. I don't have a rack or anything. Just a table next to my desk in the office.

 

[farscapesg1]

Besides noise, I would also be curious how much power these draw. I'm wanting to add a couple small hosts to get more comfortable with Vview and XenDesktop (side by side testing). Even with only 8 GB of ram, one of these should be able to handle a mixture of 4-6 XP and Win7 guests.

 

[Shadowhaxor]

How loud is this server. I was thinking of buying two of these since it was cheap. I don't have a rack or anything. Just a table next to my desk in the office.

Loud, very loud. I ended up getting two internal fan controllers and hooking them up to it so lower the noise, they have 8 fans in them!

Besides noise, I would also be curious how much power these draw. I'm wanting to add a couple small hosts to get more comfortable with Vview and XenDesktop (side by side testing). Even with only 8 GB of ram, one of these should be able to handle a mixture of 4-6 XP and Win7 guests.

How loud is this server. I was thinking of buying two of these since it was cheap. I don't have a rack or anything. Just a table next to my desk in the office.

I can tell you that I have 4 CentOS , 2 Windows 7 and a Backtrack VM on it with no issues with CPU or Memory. Still more memory wouldn't hurt.

 

[calikool]

OK. I have an idea of loud your are talking about from working in many datacenters. Nothing like a screamer at the very begining for the boot process or bios update. I wonder if a Dell Desktop system might be a better method as long as you can get one that others have already said works with ESX 4.0/5.0.