Quiet system for running ESXi

C

Christopher

Gawd
Joined
Sep 16, 2002
Messages
634
I'm looking for recommendations on a relatively quiet system for running ESXi, hosting about 5 virtual machines. This machine is going to be running in my home office, hence the need for it to be on the quiet side. I've got some Dell 2950's at the data center at work for ESXi but they are far too noisy. These virtual machines will be used for testing software deployments and do not need high availability or redundancy.

It needs about 750gb - 1TB of disk space, about 8GB of RAM. It does not need too much in the way of CPU, a quad-core 2ghz conroe based CPU would be plenty. Budget is about $4k US. It can be a tower/desktop or a rack-mount.

Recommendations on off the shelf systems? Or should I build a system?
 
Build:

Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112222&cm_re=lian-li-_-11-112-222-_-Product

Motherboard: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5100/X7DCA-L.cfm

(2x) CPUs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117152

(do these in pairs) RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134652

Optical drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136167

Video Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127367

(2x) Hard Drives for VMs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322

Hard drive to boot host: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227460

(2x) CPU HSFs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...5114056&cm_re=dynatron-_-35-114-056-_-Product

You will have to dremel out about 1/2" x 1/2" square on one of the rear vertical support bars, once you have the motherboard mounted to the slide out board tray. Obviously, this is a SFF cube workstation. It's very quiet. We have two of them, and as long as you set the BIOS fan speed to super quiet, you'll never even know they're there.

I can go VERY expensive on the ESX system builds using better hardware, but this way, you can afford to have several machines for relatively cheap, and use all the features of ESX. As you stated that this machine is really for test/dev, I kept the HDD arrangement relatively simple. Internal disks, 10k 300GB Veliciraptors for the VMs to sit on, and a small SSD for the host. No RAID in this config, as it adds unneeded complexity for most dev environments. If you wanted to use up more (per box) of your budget, the first target is the disk configuration, but the next recommended upgrade would be to a BBU SAS RAID controller with cache...and that will run (by itself) more than all of your current drives, combined. With appropriate SAS drives, and the SAS RAID controller...figure an additional $1k per box.
 
You can get a Dell PE840 from the refurb site, add a quad core and 8gb from Crucial for pretty cheap.
Add a SSD 9or good USB flash drive, like a Corsair Voyager GT) for the OS and then some 10k sata or 15k sas drives for the VM's
 
sabregen said:
Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112222&cm_re=lian-li-_-11-112-222-_-Product

(2x) CPUs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117152
Click to expand...

Eh ..., ok, so you said you have two of these cases ..., I have one as well, and in my experience these are not quiet. It's a poorly designed case that makes it very difficult to efficiently remove heat. I modded mine to include a 92mm rear exhaust fan, but even then the noise is imho unacceptably high.

Also, the OP said he was going to run 5 VMs, what does he need dual quad core CPUs for? Depending on the load 5 VMs will run fine on a single dual core (~$50 less for the CPU, no need for a second one), which also dumps less heat (65W) into the case. If you do want to go quad core, then pick a 50W Xeon, not an 80W one, if the goal is to have a quiet system.

My $0.02 anyway. ;)
 
your board bios must not have options to mod the fan speeds, then. these supermicros do. what are you using? the recommendation to only use 1 physical CPU is not recommended on this board. OP would lose 1/2 of the I/O expansion slots, have the SATA ports, and half of the RAM slots. If OP just wants a single physical CPU, then perhaps a different board would be in order.

And, perhaps you're right, maybe dual quads is overkill. OP, you could do dual dual-cores for slightly less $. You could use two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117153

It'll save you a whopping $40, total... and you'll have half the cores. FYI, the 50W quads Thuleman suggested are 2.33GHz instead of 2.0GHz, and are $359/ea versus $219/ea, so another $280 total, or $140 per.

I do not find these cases to be bad on heat, but then again, we're not gaming on them, nor do we have gaming cards in them, so there's not a lot of heat to dump. I will admit that hardware swaps are not easy, as this case is not really designed for that, at all.
 
sabregen said:
I do not find these cases to be bad on heat, but then again, we're not gaming on them, nor do we have gaming cards in them, so there's not a lot of heat to dump.
Click to expand...
Yeah I used an HD4850 gfx card and it did dump a lot of heat. I actually used a hardware mod for fan speed control ( NoiseMagic Thermocontrol NMT-3 w/ connector, still have a few of them if anyone needs some ).

Eh, good catch on the 50W Xeons, I didn't check the price, just the heat dump. I also didn't consider that you didn't have a gaming gfx card. So yeah, with a lot less heat in the case they will probably work alright. That will teach me to jump the gun. ;)
 
Thanks everyone for their input!

Looking at the Supermicro X7DCA-L, looks good. Does anyone have any experience with esxi on the Intel ICH9 SATA interface? Does it Just Work[TM]?

Since this thing will run headless once ESXi is installed (the console isn't very useful once its running) I'll probably just use the integrated video on the board.
 
My Dell PE T300s are pretty quiet. These systems are in my house. Once they're past POST, I can't hear them. I have 3 identical machines, bought at different times, price was between $3300 and $3600 depending on the promo and coupon.

Specs:
Xeon X3363 - quadcore at 2.83ghz
16gb RAM in 4 x 4gb DIMMs, max capacity 24gb (6 slots)
4x500gb SATA hard drives hotswap
PERC6/i
redundant PSU
DVDROM
Intel dual port PCIe NIC
DRAC5

All in all, they're very solid, decently spec'd systems at a very good price. I'm running ESXi 4.0 on one of them and its been rock solid. I haven't rebooted it since I got it set up.
 
dbwillis said:
You can get a Dell PE840 from the refurb site, add a quad core and 8gb from Crucial for pretty cheap.
Add a SSD 9or good USB flash drive, like a Corsair Voyager GT) for the OS and then some 10k sata or 15k sas drives for the VM's
Click to expand...

im running this at work and it is really quiet...

alot quieter than the dell poweredge 2600 i have in my garage with 6x146gb drives... :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top