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Help building an ESXi server

J

jsteinm1

Weaksauce
Joined
May 8, 2011
Messages
101
Another guy at work and myself are building a new ESXi server for the company. I'm an avid home desktop builder and know all the ins and outs of that, but when it comes to virtualized computing hardware I'm lost. We're looking to spend about $1000-$1200 on a single CPU set up with about 16GB RAM (8GB*2)

The biggest area where I am lost on this is which CPU will provide the best bargin for us. I believe we can spend about $250-400 on the CPU for this setup. The AMD 62xx Interlagos processors are 8 or 12cores in that price range and seem like a great deal. For Intel, we'd be looking at an E3 Sandy Bridge with 4cores. Can anyone offer any advice to which would be a better choice for running ESXi?

Here are the 2 systems we are looking at:

AMD Opteron 6234 - $390
Supermicro MBD-H8SGL-F-O - $255
Antec TITAN650 - $180
Kingston 8GB DDR3 1333 ECC Registered Memory - $76*2
WD Black 2TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache - $230
Total = $1207

Intel P4304BTLSHCN Pedestal Server Barebone LGA 1155 DDR3 ECC UDIMM - $520
Intel Xeon E3-1220 Sandy Bridge - $210
Kingston ValueRAM 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) - $36*4
Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s - $250
Total = $1124


Thanks for the help!
 
I just built three systems using that exact motherboard. I did find one thing, it kept telling me that memory in NUMA node 1 was missing or a bad bios. I had been running this board with 16gb ram also in the first DIMM slots, but once I added another 16gb to the other slots everything went away. So you might want to consider getting a bit more memory or spread it out over the 4 slots.
 
You're referring to the Supermicro AMD mobo with the 8 memory slots right? I had considered that since it is capable of 4 channel memory, so I would assume that it wants its memory to come in groups of four, but I hadn't dug into it or not. May be an excuse to take this thing straight to 32GB ;)

In which case if I do upgrade to 32GB, I would reduce the CPU to a 6212 to offset the price increase of the RAM.
 
I did balance out all of the memory, but for some reason I couldn't get past it. so I just purchased another 16gb or ram and that did the trick. This is what I built

Motherboard - Supermicro MBD-H8SGLCPU - AMD 6128
Memory - Patriot Signature
Case - Norco 270
Hard Drive - WD Black (Before the Prices went thru the roof)
CPU Fan - Dynatron
Raid Card - Areca 1222

I have been going with Dells, but it is just good sense moneywise to just build my own boxes. I built three of these and now I have just moved ESXi 5 to a flash drive, I am loving them even more.
 
jsteinm1 said:
Another guy at work and myself are building a new ESXi server for the company. I'm an avid home desktop builder and know all the ins and outs of that, but when it comes to virtualized computing hardware I'm lost. We're looking to spend about $1000-$1200 on a single CPU set up with about 16GB RAM (8GB*2)

The biggest area where I am lost on this is which CPU will provide the best bargin for us. I believe we can spend about $250-400 on the CPU for this setup. The AMD 62xx Interlagos processors are 8 or 12cores in that price range and seem like a great deal. For Intel, we'd be looking at an E3 Sandy Bridge with 4cores. Can anyone offer any advice to which would be a better choice for running ESXi?

Here are the 2 systems we are looking at:

AMD Opteron 6234 - $390
Supermicro MBD-H8SGL-F-O - $255
Antec TITAN650 - $180
Kingston 8GB DDR3 1333 ECC Registered Memory - $76*2
WD Black 2TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache - $230
Total = $1207

Intel P4304BTLSHCN Pedestal Server Barebone LGA 1155 DDR3 ECC UDIMM - $520
Intel Xeon E3-1220 Sandy Bridge - $210
Kingston ValueRAM 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) - $36*4
Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s - $250
Total = $1124


Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...
What are you planning on virtualizing?
Obviously the AMD offerings, with 8+ cores allow for more VM's to be run.
That would be the biggest question in my mind
 
One VM for sure will be used to run Microsoft SharePoint.

3-4VMs will be used to simulate our clients servers and domain controllers - running Server 2003 with various configurations.

There stands a possibility that we could try to do vitalized computing across the network on this machine running Windows XP and Rockwell Automation software, pending on how it goes.
 
jsteinm1 said:
One VM for sure will be used to run Microsoft SharePoint.

3-4VMs will be used to simulate our clients servers and domain controllers - running Server 2003 with various configurations.

There stands a possibility that we could try to do vitalized computing across the network on this machine running Windows XP and Rockwell Automation software, pending on how it goes.
Click to expand...
The AMD solution with more cores will allow you more virtual space, while the lesser core Intel will be limited in that regard, obviously.
 
ciscokid454 said:
The AMD solution with more cores will allow you more virtual space, while the lesser core Intel will be limited in that regard, obviously.
Click to expand...

Well...maybe. More cores is usually good, but slower cores take longer to complete operations and therefore stay tied up longer. In my experience, I see *VERY* few AMD VMware clusters.
 
NetJunkie said:
Well...maybe. More cores is usually good, but slower cores take longer to complete operations and therefore stay tied up longer. In my experience, I see *VERY* few AMD VMware clusters.
Click to expand...
I was going to include, something to that extent, however, I didn't want to start a fanboy war. (*and what I said, was not in-accurate)

Yes, Intel VMware enviroments will perform better than an AMD solution.
There are certain applications, where more cores, not more performance is worthwhile, but bottom line is, Intel hardware=what you want.
 
Alright with Intel being the best bet, next question is mobo and memory. Is the new Asus C206 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131725&Tpk=asus c206) mobo a worthwhile mobo? Does that chip have some good advantages?

Also for memory, I see it takes Unbuffered/Unregistered ECC or non-ECC memory. Will unbuffered "desktop memory" (per Newegg) work for this? On the server side all they have for unbuffered 8GB sticks is an expensive Kingston model for $165. Would something like two of these Corsair sticks work for that Asus mobo? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233218
 
jsteinm1 said:
Alright with Intel being the best bet, next question is mobo and memory. Is the new Asus C206 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131725&Tpk=asus c206) mobo a worthwhile mobo? Does that chip have some good advantages?

Also for memory, I see it takes Unbuffered/Unregistered ECC or non-ECC memory. Will unbuffered "desktop memory" (per Newegg) work for this? On the server side all they have for unbuffered 8GB sticks is an expensive Kingston model for $165. Would something like two of these Corsair sticks work for that Asus mobo? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233218
Click to expand...


What is your bottom line for spending on this?
 
You need to focus on your storage. With the amount of VM's and applications you can host with 16GB of RAM, your hard drive selection is limiting.
 
ciscokid454 said:
I was going to include, something to that extent, however, I didn't want to start a fanboy war. (*and what I said, was not in-accurate)

Yes, Intel VMware enviroments will perform better than an AMD solution.
There are certain applications, where more cores, not more performance is worthwhile, but bottom line is, Intel hardware=what you want.
Click to expand...
Even with Intel their low end offerings are going to drive you mad.
 
If this is going to be for production, I would also suggest buying a brand name server rather then building one. While you can build one for your budget, it would be appropriate for a test lab, not production. Dell servers have really come down in price now, and although its going to be likely more then your state $1,000-1200.00 if you buy new, you have warranty and nothing really to worry about. What is your backup strategy for the VM's?
 
NetJunkie said:
Well...maybe. More cores is usually good, but slower cores take longer to complete operations and therefore stay tied up longer. In my experience, I see *VERY* few AMD VMware clusters.
Click to expand...

I had all AMD hosts when I worked for the bank. I'll agree and CPU ready could be a problem, but I was pretty religious about keeping vCPU counts low as possible. Part of the problem is, once you make the investment, it is hard to get out of unless you want to start a new cluster. That is hard to swallow sometimes for smaller places,
 
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