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Multiple small hosts or one large one?

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peanuthead

Supreme [H]ardness
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Feb 1, 2006
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Sp lately I have been thinking of taking my smaller hosts and selling them off for one larger host (that can handle greater than 32GB RAM) and just virtualize ESXi inside itself. This would also allows me to free up some space and decrease computer count. Am I off my rocker in thinking this or am I better off keeping my current setup? The original idea was to create a mock network business network from A-Z so I can learn all aspects from virtualization, networking, VLANs, etc. Just interesting in hearing other peoples thoughts.
 
What are your current machines? Are they rack-mount or desktop? Are you ever maxing out your CPUs? In a lab environment I rarely find my self CPU bound, before I run out of RAM.

Consolidating comes down to memory density.

You can go for something like a Supermicro X9DRi-F, socket 2011, 12 slots for RAM. You would probably be in one for a around $3000 for a 2011 setup with 96GB ram.

If your on a budget though (like I always am) you can pick up older dual 1366 setups like a HP Z800 or Dell T7500 workstation with the 2nd CPU daughter card. Put two 6-core processors (X56x0) in and you would have 12 ram slots (96GB with 8-gig sticks, 192GB with 16-gig sticks) in a nice quiet package. The Dell T5500 can be had with dual CPU but only has 9 slots for RAM.

For rack mount, there are still some deals on the 1u C1100s and HP DL160 G6 and they have 18 slots for RAM (72GB with 4-gig sticks). If you still want separate hosts you can look at the C6100 or C6005 (AMD) systems with multiple 2 CPU nodes.

You really just have to scour ebay for deals. I just picked up 32GB (4x8GB sticks) of Registered DDR3 ECC ram for work for $160.
 
I am all tower cases. No rack mounts for me at the moment. It would be all about the ram. I definitely don't have any cpu or storage contention.
 
I have tried both ways. Honestly, even with a super fast, super large machine virtualizing ESXi is not going to be as good as having physical hosts. I would recommend that if you have the room to use separate hosts.
 
That's a helluva deal. Also, as long as this is for a home LAB, why not condense? As always, check out ebay for deals. Find the local computer/electronics recycling places in the area, and check out their ebay accounts. I've scored a bunch of good gear that way. My last purchase for my home lab was a Sun X4170 w/72gb RAM, 2xL5520s and 4x146 SAS for a song and a dance.
 
SGalbincea said:
I have tried both ways. Honestly, even with a super fast, super large machine virtualizing ESXi is not going to be as good as having physical hosts. I would recommend that if you have the room to use separate hosts.
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For a home lab environment that won't see any production loads ever?

Just buy a $300 computer at any grocery store, put in a $100 SSD and another $100 of RAM, and you can run your entire lab environment on a single machine in addition to XBMC and whatever else there is.

The whole "go big or go home" is imho completely unnecessary. A single machine saves "capex", it saves money running it, and in many cases there will still be a lot of capacity left.

For a home lab you could get away installing nested ESXi on a Ti-89 calculator if that could be done. There's just no need to buy and power a bunch of physical machines.

My home lab is nested ESXi in Workstation, I spin those VMs up when I need them, and they are off when I don't need them. Works just fine, though I do have a few SSDs, but that's just for capacity and not for speed.
 
Thuleman said:
For a home lab environment that won't see any production loads ever?

Just buy a $300 computer at any grocery store, put in a $100 SSD and another $100 of RAM, and you can run your entire lab environment on a single machine in addition to XBMC and whatever else there is.

The whole "go big or go home" is imho completely unnecessary. A single machine saves "capex", it saves money running it, and in many cases there will still be a lot of capacity left.

For a home lab you could get away installing nested ESXi on a Ti-89 calculator if that could be done. There's just no need to buy and power a bunch of physical machines.

My home lab is nested ESXi in Workstation, I spin those VMs up when I need them, and they are off when I don't need them. Works just fine, though I do have a few SSDs, but that's just for capacity and not for speed.
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I'm facing the same dilemma.. looking to purchase some gear in the upcoming month.. and haven't decided on whether I want to purchase some older tech... or just dump some ram into my hardware I got for free from work.

3 HP Z200 workstations, LGA1156 based; 2 have i3-530's and the other has an i3-540
Will take 16gb of non-ecc ddr3 or unbuffered ecc...

Looks to be about $300 or so.. to pump up two of the workstations to 16gb..
These are the dual core, with HT i3's so they should be adequate to run a vsphere lab.. turn the other one into a storage box and be done..
 
There are even production environments that only use 15-25% of the available CPU resources, CPU is definitely not going to be an issue in a lab environment unless you are planning to test CPU intensive somethings.

Memory is also something that is not as important. The minimum requirement to run Windows Server 2012 R2 is 512 MB, it will run fine in a lab environment using 1 GB. If you run multiple of those you get the benefits of TPS so much less than 1 GB will be used per VM.

What really kills most home lab environments is the lack of IO. A single SSD will have more IOPS than multi-thousand-dollar NAS/SAN boxes. Raid controllers are completely unnecessary. The only issue with SSDs is capacity. That can be somewhat mitigated by running linked clones, but it's still an issue.

Still, a single desktop machine with a cheap processor, 16-24 GB of RAM, 4-6 SSDs, and running everything nested in VMware workstation makes for an inexpensive and quiet lab. Most everything can be done in a nested lab (if your CPU supports nesting 64bit) with the only exception being simulating certain HA/FT scenarios.

If it's a man cave thing and people just want to have 42 U of gear in their basement, then fine, call it a hobby and accept the expense of running all the stuff. If it's for learning and not for "looking cool" and people don't want to spend a lot then a nested setup on a single PC simply cannot be beat for cost/benefit.
 
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