Home lab ESXi build suggesstion needed

D

David-Duc

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 22, 2010
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I'm in the process of building a cheap vmware home lab system and it seems like esxi has a lot of issues with desktop/consumer hardware (no nic driver, no sata pass through...) so I'm asking you guys if this build will be good with esxi (I don't mind going intel either):

AMD FX8320E + Gigabyte 990FXA UD3 R5 = $155
4 * 8GB DDR3 1600 = $100
EVGA Geforce 210 = $30
Reusing other parts (SSD, case, psu...)
 
what do you want to do ? How critical is the data on the box ? For example I run a (FreeBSD) ZFS-based NAS server (HBA passthrough for the SAS disks) and put ECC memory and a Xeon in my ESXi box. To make sure I get max stability.

You can only passthrough complete devices (whole SATA controller); if that is shared with ESXi direct you are out of luck.
 
Thanks for the reply. To answer your question, it won't be for critical data since that esxi box is going to be my sandbox machine. Right now I'm going to put windows server & exchange on it and pfsense. Of course that won't be the end of it because I'll be messing around with it when I have time.
 
ESXi has very limited support to nic and disk controllers.
Especially with desktop boards this and the lack of vt-d and ECC is often a problem.

For a trouble free setup, I would suggest a small mATX mainboard with an Intel server-chipset that starts with C in the chipset name
(allows vt-d and ECC RAM) with an Intel nic and Sata for a local datastore (no raid).

Start your search here with socket 1151 and an Intel G4400 or better
UP Xeon Motherboards | Motherboards | Products - Super Micro Computer, Inc.
ASRock Rack > Products

There are some cheaper boards with a C232 chipset from Gigabyte or Asus but the lacks IPMI and often use cheaper realtec nics instead of Intel (Trouble!!)

If you want to use a virtualized storage VM ex with a ZFS storage appliance that gives you advanced software raid,
you should use a board with an integrated LSI HBA, ex Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | X11SSL-CF

For such a config, I offer a free/ ready to use ZFS appliance for ESXi based on Solarish/OmniOS.
This is where ZFS comes from with fast/best integration of ZFS into the OS
see my HowTo http://www.napp-it.org/doc/downloads/napp-in-one.pdf
 
Thanks for the help man. Looked at the X11SSL-CF on amazon and it costs a whooping $288 (more than the 990fx + 8320e.) Looks like I'll have to save some more for the build if I want to go with server hardware then.
 
I have that mobo. Should work with basics for you excluding a possible problem with the NIC. You can either buy a Intel NIC, I highly suggest if you do that get a dual or quad nic. OR you can do like I did and install ESXi 4.1 then upgraded to 6.x. The older Esxi versions have the NIC driver still. When you upgrade it retains the driver. I ended up purchasing a quad intel NIC anyway just so I can fuk around with the networking. I had 0 problems passing through the Etron USB ports BUT I have revision 3 and I have heard later revisions lost this ability. I also haven't heard any good news from people trying to use Nvidia Geforce cards. But this is information I found like 4 years ago. I personally have never tried passthrough on the onboard sata as I just use my HBA card.
 
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I used a tool to inject the NIC driver for my Gigabyte mobo into the ESXi 6 installer. Suitable for sandbox environments.
 
Finally, got everything up and running. Build specs:

AMD FX 8320E
Gigabyte 970A-UD3P (Rev 2.0)
4 x 8 GB Crucial DDR3 1600 (unstable at 1600, works fine at 1333). However, 2 x 8 GB works at 1600.
OCZ Arc 100 240GB SSD
EVGA 500B PSU
VisionTek HD 5450
ebay Intel Gigabit NIC

So far so good, can't complain for $450, ESXi 6 wouldn't recognize the Realtek LAN so I disabled it in the BIOS.
 
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