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Help with AMD mATX ESXi server build

T

trueimage

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 10, 2002
Messages
239
Hey, I'm trying to get a good build and want to make sure these things will all work.

motherboard: Asus M4A785T-M mATX AMD motherboard
cpu: Phenom II X6 1055T 3.8 GHz
ram: trying to find 4x4GB DDR3
HDD: thinking 2x Kingston SSDNow V-Series 64GB in RAID 0

So is this a good idea with those SSDs in RAID 0? How does TRIM / cleanup / garbage collection work? Which RAID card do you recommend?

Case: Sugo SG02
PSU: Corsair VX 450 or 550
Video: eVGA GTX 460

Gonna swap the HD to a spindle drive to use this as a gaming machine occasionally (unless you can somehow dual boot Win 7 and ESXi lol

obviously, I need help. So, help! please ;)
 
Unless it has recently changed SSD's in in RAID do NOT support trim or garbage collection. I don't keep up 100% with the current SSD state so their firmware MAY support it, but AFAIK it doesn't.

And TBH is there any reason you aren't just splurging and going with an i7 930 build? You get 2 more cores and triple channel ram (easier to get higher capacity).

And as for the dual boot, I had my ESX machine at school running win7, I boot knoppix and ran gparted and split the partition down the middle. I went to install ESX to dual boot with win7 and ESX basically just ignored the partition and took the whole drive. That being said, maybe if you partition beforehand it might work, I'll let someone else with more ESX experience chime in.

And for RAID0 I don't think you will need a card, the mobo you get should have a decent enough raid controller (for raid0).
 
Well someone was telling me the AMD chips are better for virtualization than the intels, I thought that was bogus, but when I looked the motherboards are $70-130 instead of $150 - 300, and the cpus are cheaper too. The i5 750 is $10 more and the i7 930 $100 more than the phenom II X6 I mentioned.

I also want to keep this at mATX, Small Form Factor so usually the board are the dual channel ram slots.

If you have any suggestions then I'd be open to them. I don't think I can get the # of cores or the motherboard for anywhere close to the price of the AMD if I went with intel, but convince me why I should spend the extra.
 
Dear OP,

What you can consider

1. Buy 1 x 8GB USB flash drive. (smaller is ok but little price difference)
2. Install ESXi onto USB flash drive
3. For ESXi testing, boot from USB flash drive.

4. For Windows booting, un-plug the USB flash drive and you can boot normally from disk.

5. For ESXi datastore, the USB flash drive is not recommended. You can use one or two internal mechanical SATA disks in AHCI mode. Or you can also buy WD or other brands Dual-Disk external disk enclosure with eSATA connection. Obviously you can built with 3rd party empty enclosure and buy disks to fill as well. You need eSATA and AHCI mode. If you are not using hardware RAID card, the disks on eSATA connection needs to be in JBOD because ESXi does not support fakeraid.

6. If you have no objection, you can use the SSD for datastore as well, but I am not really sure how consumer-level SSD will survive intensive ESXi testing. You really need to watch out for write-related wear.
 
lightp2 said:
Dear OP,

What you can consider

1. Buy 1 x 8GB USB flash drive. (smaller is ok but little price difference)
2. Install ESXi onto USB flash drive
3. For ESXi testing, boot from USB flash drive.

4. For Windows booting, un-plug the USB flash drive and you can boot normally from disk.

5. For ESXi datastore, the USB flash drive is not recommended. You can use one or two internal mechanical SATA disks in AHCI mode. Or you can also buy WD or other brands Dual-Disk external disk enclosure with eSATA connection. Obviously you can built with 3rd party empty enclosure and buy disks to fill as well. You need eSATA and AHCI mode. If you are not using hardware RAID card, the disks on eSATA connection needs to be in JBOD because ESXi does not support fakeraid.

6. If you have no objection, you can use the SSD for datastore as well, but I am not really sure how consumer-level SSD will survive intensive ESXi testing. You really need to watch out for write-related wear.
Click to expand...


Wow, excellent suggestions! Thanks so much!

I'll still take some suggestions on a cheap raid card and the rest of the hardware :)
 
My two ESXi boxes at home run an AMD Athlon II X3 405e and a X4 600e, both 45W CPUs.

I can't comment on how much the L3 cache will improve performance but for a lab environment or home setup, none of the VMs are being pushed too hard so it really doesn't make a difference.
 
@dmin said:
As for a raid card consider a dell perc 5 for some info http://www.overclock.net/raid-controllers-software/359025-perc-5-i-raid-card-tips.html

Not to hijack your thread but does anyone know the performance hit a AMD x4 620 vs a phenom x4? does the L3 really matter much in virtualization? I plan on running ESXi but might run hypev.
Click to expand...

I can't say specifically but in synthetic benchmarks the athlon and the phenom don't differ. It's usually in gaming that the cache comes into play.
 
Alright thats good. I'm thinking of trying to get a stable 3.0ghz clock on it and let it be.
 
apparently certain intel raid drivers now work with TRIM, so 2x SSD in RAID 0 seems like a go, unless ESXi doesn't support the raid on these boards...

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/03/23/intel-releases-trim-for-raid/1

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/detail_desc.aspx?agr=N&ProductID=&DwnldID=15251

On that list, the Intel DQ57TM is on the ESXi Whitebox HCL, and is available at my local store. I guess that puts me back on intel cpus unless anyone has any similar information for TRIM with SSD in RAID, and which cards support it?
 
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