New ESXi server specs.....good, bad?

I

infamus

Gawd
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Sep 5, 2006
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AMD Quad Core 1354 Barcelona
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105212

Asus M2N-LR motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131134R

Kingston ECC 2gb ram stick maybe 2 or 4 of these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134881

Seagate 7200.12 500gb HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148395

have extra PSU and case

total w/tax+shipping = $342.57

OR

I could get a Dell Power EdgeT105 w/ X2 CPU, 2x160gb hdds, 2gb ram for $300 plus S/H
 
specs look fine. with the nforce 3600 pro based board, you sata onboard connections become SCSI devices to ESXi. That's a good thing, it'll help keep costs down. However, 2GB of RAM will suck, bigtime. MINIMUM should be 4. I would recommend that you start at 8GB, but perhaps you can get away with less, depending on what your plans are for VMs
 
Did you ever put together this system? I'm thinking of using the exact same motherboard for ESXi.
 
The 1354 budapest is also down to $84.99 with free shipping. Any AM2 motherboard work with these or server only?
 
You'll want lots of ram. If you can afford it definitely go with 8gb, it's hard to overdo it with ram and vm machines.
 
Just make sure you thoroughly go through the ESXi Whitebox HCL before committing to ESXi. The sucker is really picky on the motherboards.
 
sabregen said:
specs look fine. with the nforce 3600 pro based board, you sata onboard connections become SCSI devices to ESXi. That's a good thing, it'll help keep costs down. However, 2GB of RAM will suck, bigtime. MINIMUM should be 4. I would recommend that you start at 8GB, but perhaps you can get away with less, depending on what your plans are for VMs
Click to expand...

He said "maybe 2 or 4 of these"... thus implying, 4 or 8 GB of RAM.
 
looks like I will need to get a SATA controller card then. I need an mATX setup
 
Jay_oasis said:
looks like I will need to get a SATA controller card then. I need an mATX setup
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more than that at the issue. Chipset, network cards, etc are all pretty limited. I doubt you'll find a mATX board that will work well. SATA is iffy too.

ESX is an enterprise level piece of software, not consumer. Buy a real server :)
 
lopoetve said:
more than that at the issue. Chipset, network cards, etc are all pretty limited. I doubt you'll find a mATX board that will work well. SATA is iffy too.

ESX is an enterprise level piece of software, not consumer. Buy a real server :)
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Hate to burst your bubble, but I have ESXi 3.5 running on two Pentium D systems using D945GTP motherboards. Naturally everything works as the chipset is from Intel and the G-Bit NIC is from Intel. Telling him to buy a real server is the lazy way to solve the problem. If he looked at the Whitebox HCL, he would be able to find the right parts required to run ESXi.

While ESX is the Enterprise Level hypervisor, ESXi is not hence why he is looking for the cheapest way to run VM's.
 
bellisca said:
Hate to burst your bubble, but I have ESXi 3.5 running on two Pentium D systems using D945GTP motherboards. Naturally everything works as the chipset is from Intel and the G-Bit NIC is from Intel. Telling him to buy a real server is the lazy way to solve the problem. If he looked at the Whitebox HCL, he would be able to find the right parts required to run ESXi.

While ESX is the Enterprise Level hypervisor, ESXi is not hence why he is looking for the cheapest way to run VM's.
Click to expand...

Since when did ESXi become a none-enterprise level hypervisor? Just because it's free without any support contract doesn't make it none-enterprise. And to that point, ESXi has a stricter HCL than ESX does. There's hardware, like the Intel 10GbE card I have, that doesn't have driver support in ESXi yet but does under ESX.
 
IMHO, ESXi is not enterprise level amongst the free bare hypervisors as it does not come with Live Migration without a price. Now, hoping on that new XenServer license coming out on the 30th, I'll guarantee you that it will have more features than ESXi will. I've been comparing the two for quite some time now and one of the key features I'm looking for is Live Migration. Last I checked, good ole M$ was looking to throw it in as well into Hyper-V Server 2.0.

In a production environment, who would run a Hypervisor without some form of redundancy? You'd expect that to be in an enterprise level product.
 
bellisca said:
Hate to burst your bubble, but I have ESXi 3.5 running on two Pentium D systems using D945GTP motherboards. Naturally everything works as the chipset is from Intel and the G-Bit NIC is from Intel. Telling him to buy a real server is the lazy way to solve the problem. If he looked at the Whitebox HCL, he would be able to find the right parts required to run ESXi.

While ESX is the Enterprise Level hypervisor, ESXi is not hence why he is looking for the cheapest way to run VM's.
Click to expand...

since when does that change it being enterprise level, or supported?

I've seen people convince it to run on a PIII. That doesn't make it a good idea. Or all that functional.
 
bellisca said:
ESXi is not enterprise level as it does not come with Live Migration without a price. Now, hoping on that new XenServer license coming out on the 30th, I'll guarantee you that it will have more features than ESXi will. I've been comparing the two for quite some time now and one of the key features I'm looking for is Live Migration.
Click to expand...

That doesn't change it from being, and having been designed as, an enterprise level piece of software.

Features? Big deal - ESXi was originally designed as a hypervisor for enterprise customers who wanted a small footprint. Then VMware decided to give it away for free - doesn't change its origin.
 
Well in this economy, I'd think the idea of pushing dollar signs in his face isn't the solution. He's looking for an economical solution to his problem and a $2000-$3000 server to run a few VM's isn't economical.

Sure, VMWare can throw it's product out there, but a lot of I/T admins are going to start looking for features. If the competition can make a more fulfilling product and provide it for free, I'd be more inclined to use it. VMWare is shooting themselves in the foot.

I'm going to stop derailing the thread now.
 
bellisca said:
IMHO, ESXi is not enterprise level amongst the free bare hypervisors as it does not come with Live Migration without a price. Now, hoping on that new XenServer license coming out on the 30th, I'll guarantee you that it will have more features than ESXi will. I've been comparing the two for quite some time now and one of the key features I'm looking for is Live Migration. Last I checked, good ole M$ was looking to throw it in as well into Hyper-V Server 2.0.

In a production environment, who would run a Hypervisor without some form of redundancy? You'd expect that to be in an enterprise level product.
Click to expand...

That doesn't change the product from being enterprise level - it just requires the management center to do live migrations, which isn't available for free.

It was designed and certified on enterprise level hardware, for customers of that type - it became free AFTER the fact.

And any enterprise customer using the software is paying for it - especially for support.
 
bellisca said:
Well in this economy, I'd think the idea of pushing dollar signs in his face isn't the solution. He's looking for an economical solution to his problem and a $2000-$3000 server to run a few VM's isn't economical.
Click to expand...

Who said anything about 3k?

Shop ebay - find a used 1950 of the like, or a supermicro chassis - you can build a 3.5 supported box cheap.

Heck, I just saw a set of HP 585 and 385s sell for less than 300 a piece on craigslist. Would have only taken a bit to get them up to speed.
 
bellisca said:
IMHO, ESXi is not enterprise level amongst the free bare hypervisors as it does not come with Live Migration without a price. Now, hoping on that new XenServer license coming out on the 30th, I'll guarantee you that it will have more features than ESXi will. I've been comparing the two for quite some time now and one of the key features I'm looking for is Live Migration. Last I checked, good ole M$ was looking to throw it in as well into Hyper-V Server 2.0.

In a production environment, who would run a Hypervisor without some form of redundancy? You'd expect that to be in an enterprise level product.
Click to expand...

Just because ESXi doesn't have Live Migration for free, doesn't mean it's not enterprise level. Glad to see other hypervisors adding (or will be adding) features for free that VMWare is not. But guess what? VMWare is a business and they want to make money(and as a share-holder I'm OK with that). They're giving away the base license to get people pulled into the product, welcome to Marketing 101. Maybe you fell asleep in the back row of that class.
 
bellisca said:
Well in this economy, I'd think the idea of pushing dollar signs in his face isn't the solution. He's looking for an economical solution to his problem and a $2000-$3000 server to run a few VM's isn't economical.

Sure, VMWare can throw it's product out there, but a lot of I/T admins are going to start looking for features. If the competition can make a more fulfilling product and provide it for free, I'd be more inclined to use it. VMWare is shooting themselves in the foot.

I'm going to stop derailing the thread now.
Click to expand...

No major company is going to use a product without a support agreement, and the support agreement comes with VC. They'd be crazy not to, and be liable for downtime.

ESXi free version is for people with single servers and those playing around at home, or standalone servers for small business - the same people the current version of VMWare server, Hyper-V, and prior XenServer targeted.
 
LittleMe said:
Just because ESXi doesn't have Live Migration for free, doesn't mean it's not enterprise level. Glad to see other hypervisors adding (or will be adding) features for free that VMWare is not. But guess what? VMWare is a business and they want to make money(and as a share-holder I'm OK with that). They're giving away the base license to get people pulled into the product, welcome to Marketing 101. Maybe you fell asleep in the back row of that class.
Click to expand...

Hah, that's a joke and a half. Last time I checked, if you wanted to succeed in marketing over your competitor, you had to offer more value per dollar. Citrix has done a very good job of that and in my position as a consumer, I'm going with the product that can give me the best value for my dollar. As for support? I don't really need it as there are multitudes of answers on the Internet. If someone can't hit a power switch on a server, then they deserve to buy a support contract. Sheesh.
 
bellisca said:
Hah, that's a joke and a half. Last time I checked, if you wanted to succeed in marketing over your competitor, you had to offer more value per dollar. Citrix has done a very good job of that and in my position as a consumer, I'm going with the product that can give me the best value for my dollar. As for support? I don't really need it as there are multitudes of answers on the Internet. If someone can't hit a power switch on a server, then they deserve to buy a support contract. Sheesh.
Click to expand...

Consumer? It isn't marketed to consumers. It's marketed at enterprise level companies looking for enterprise level support agreements.

You obviously don't work at an enterprise level company. The internet is great, but the internet isn't liable for keeping your company up - an enterprise level SLA is.

There are many, many complex questions that support is there for, including ~fixing~ your environment, that can't be answered by the internet - most enterprise level support isn't your normal tech support phone monkey in India, but an actual sysad or engineer who knows the product and the supported hardware inside and out.

And, unlike the internet, a qualified engineer isn't generally going to give you a wrong answer. Don't get me started at how many "bad" answers are out there that I've seen destroy complete environments.
 
ESXi 3.5 Update 4 added new support for SATA/SAS controllers and NICs

SAS Controllers and SATA Controllers:
The following are newly supported SATA Controllers.

■PMC 8011 (for SAS and SATA drives)

■Intel ICH9
■Intel ICH10
■CERC 6/I SATA/SAS Integrated RAID Controller (for SAS and SATA drivers)
■HP Smart Array P700m Controller
Notes:

1.Some limitations apply in terms of support for SATA controllers. For more information, see SATA Controller Support in ESX 3.5 (KB 1008673).
2.Storing VMFS datastores on native SATA drives is not supported.

Network Cards: The following are newly supported network interface cards:

■HP NC375i Integrated Quad Port Multifunction Gigabit Server Adapter
■HP NC362i Integrated Dual port Gigabit Server Adapter
■Intel 82598EB 10 Gigabit AT Network Connection
■HP NC360m Dual 1 Gigabit/NC364m Quad 1 Gigabit
■Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter
■Intel 82574L Gigabit Network Connection
■Intel 10 Gigabit XF SR Dual Port Server Adapter
■Intel 10 Gigabit XF SR Server Adapter
■Intel 10 Gigabit XF LR Server Adapter
■Intel 10 Gigabit CX4 Dual Port Server Adapter
■Intel 10 Gigabit AF DA Dual Port Server Adapter
■Intel 10 Gigabit AT Server Adapter
■Intel 82598EB 10 Gigabit AT CX4 Network Connection
■NetXtreme BCM5722 Gigabit Ethernet
■NetXtreme BCM5755 Gigabit Ethernet
■NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet
■NetXtreme BCM5756 Gigabit Ethernet

Expanded Support: The E1000 Intel network interface card (NIC) is now available for NetWare 5 and NetWare 6 guest operating systems.
Click to expand...
 
Rather than start a new thread, I think I'll just hop on here....

I'm looking to build/buy a ESXi server for my workplace, to replace a current VMware Sever 1.0.8 installation on my Win2003 box. All we need to do is lightly run multiple operating systems for compatibility testing with our product, what kind of specs are necessary for ESXi to handle this? Is it just simpler to go through He-, 'Dell', or some other pre-built server?
 
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