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Rackable Systems?

X

xtropx

n00b
Joined
Oct 6, 2011
Messages
37
Hello. I am considering one of these for starting a home Virtualization Lab. I am thinking they will run Proxmox or something KVM right now, until I make on the ambitious plans to go for VCP or something.

79c19c6f_server1.jpeg


Does anybody own any of these? I don't have a separate room for my servers, so I have been looking to keep the noise down in my office. So how loud are they? How much power do they draw?

Is there really any gain in buying a 2U server with a quad core and at least 8GB of RAM over building one myself? Recommendations for server models that make good ESXi servers?
 
They are really loud. They've only got one set of fans in the back which suck air in and blow it through the port-end of it so you can imagine what kind of fans they use.
 
if your decent at building, you can build a little i3 or i5 system and be perfectly set. Silent and powerful, as well as easy on the electric bill.
 
D-EJ915 said:
They are really loud. They've only got one set of fans in the back which suck air in and blow it through the port-end of it so you can imagine what kind of fans they use.
Click to expand...

This. I had two old dual P4 Xeon Rackable Systems 2U systems a while back, and they were very loud with the tops on and fans on.

I think one used some high-speed 80mm fans, and the other used a row of insanely-high-speed 40mm's.
 
dashpuppy said:
Are you looking for a quiet server ? Rack mount or non ?

I have some suggestions.
Click to expand...

By all means, yes! I would prefer rack mount, but I do not have a lot of money. I am trying to get everything in a rack to save space. Trying to cut down on the overall noise/power usage/space, but still keep all the functionality I require here at home. Not an easy task.

ChRoNo16 said:
if your decent at building, you can build a little i3 or i5 system and be perfectly set. Silent and powerful, as well as easy on the electric bill.
Click to expand...

Would an i3 or i5 be powerful enough for ESXi? I am a little out of the loop on Intel Models right now....
 
i3 or i5 would be fine, whats important is how many vm's you plan to run, and what for. A nice quad core i5 would be just fine for a tinkering box. 8gb or so of ram to start.
 
xtropx said:
By all means, yes! I would prefer rack mount, but I do not have a lot of money. I am trying to get everything in a rack to save space. Trying to cut down on the overall noise/power usage/space, but still keep all the functionality I require here at home. Not an easy task.




Would an i3 or i5 be powerful enough for ESXi? I am a little out of the loop on Intel Models right now....
Click to expand...

An i3 i5 would be perfect, my last Asus rs300 was dead silent and powerfull, I paid 400$ for the bare bone system 200$ for CPU and ram you can gradually add as u need more.

What's your budget ?
 
It is more about consolidation then purchasing a new system. I was hoping that since a rack-able with a Quad Core Xeon and 8GB RAM could be had on ebay for less then 300$ I would just grab one, install ESXi and be up and running. Right now I have:
1 old gateway, single core, 4GB RAM, 300GB HD BTX form - Ubuntu Server, Samba, Squid, Deluge
1 Custom Intel Core 2 6600 4GB RAM, 150GB HD, 2 Quad 10/100 NICs - Currently has Debian on it; Dynamips Server
1 AMD Phenom X6 1100T 16GB RAM, 300GB HD, ATI 6870 - Windows 7

So I am trying to consolidate. The Gateway would make a good File Server if I could transfer it to a 2U or 4U case and upgrade it all the way, but it is BTX form factor.

Dynamips server haven't upgraded because Intel Core 2 Quads are RIDICULOUS $$$ still, and so is DDR2 for that matter.

Windows 7 Machine rarely gets used, hardly EVER taxed, but it is my main workstation - I have had it as a server before, but if I get rid of it, I would be without a workstation unless I killed my dynamips server.

Trying to get ONE box to run all the servers:

1. Ubuntu Samba, Squid, Deluge
2. Domain Controller
3. Dynamips Server
4. Test bed for Linux System Administration, Windows Server Administration, Firewall Engineering, & general tinkering

& ONE Windows 7 Workstation. Budget max is probably about 200$ right now. I might end up having to wait. I still want a Cisco 3640 or something to run call manager - I have a land line coming in soon.:)
 
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Personally I have an I7 860 and 16 GB of ram, Ram seems to be the most limiting factor (but I do have one VM taking up 8 GB on average.)

If you have a microcenter near you, you can get a Mobo + processor for fairly cheap. Hell ram is cheap too.

In all honesty. I had a Rack mount server (Old IBM X346) I couldn't keep it on in the room It sounded like a wind tunnel. You could feel the area around it being a few degrees higher as well.

I'd go for a whitebox personally you have more control of the upgrade ability of the PC. I chose to be limited to 16 GB of ram, you don't have to.


For example, My Vhost with like 4+ Vm's running at the same time AND realtime Transcoding in of of the VM's using 8 Virtual Cores, This is what my CPU Usage is at.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Ram usage isn't too bad either.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us
 
I have a Dell Optiplex 980 system for sale.

I5 quad core 8 gigs ddr3 ram ( capable of 16 i believe )
its just a LITTLE thing quiet as hell, runs esxi & xen perfectly ( yest last week i ran it on it )

Esxi 5 running on it.

esx-5.jpg


Looks like this, Sitting beside rack.

DSCN0363.JPG


Id sell it to ya for 300$ and we can split shipping 25$ ish each.
 
I suppose you don't need that anymore with that nice dell 1u sitting there :D
Those Optiplex are nice. Our school has some of the i7 models we are using with 16GB of ram. I notice the i5 650 (which I see, CAN be upgraded), is a dual core with HT. How did this scale with 6-7 VM's on there? I know CPU isn't much of an issue, just curious. 300$ is a great deal; in the position I am in seems like a whole lot though - I will have to discuss it with the higher powers. ;) You know how that goes...
 
xtropx said:
I suppose you don't need that anymore with that nice dell 1u sitting there :D
Those Optiplex are nice. Our school has some of the i7 models we are using with 16GB of ram. I notice the i5 650 (which I see, CAN be upgraded), is a dual core with HT. How did this scale with 6-7 VM's on there? I know CPU isn't much of an issue, just curious. 300$ is a great deal; in the position I am in seems like a whole lot though - I will have to discuss it with the higher powers. ;) You know how that goes...
Click to expand...

tell her' it's quiet and takes up VERY LITTLE space and power :)
 
I would turn your AMD Phenom system into an ESXi box and virtualize the other two, then use one of the other two boxes as your windows machine. Not sure if all the hardware in the Phenom box is ESXi compatible but you can easily google the the motherboard model to see if anyone has installed ESXi on it. If that doesn't work out, then you can build a little white box for between $500-800 depending on what you put in it, i3, i5 or i7 and 8-32GB of RAM are all options, single 1TB or larger hard drive and a network card if onboard is not supported under ESXi. A small form factor system or even small tower doesn't take up much space and it can run headless without a monitor/kb or mouse.
 
I use an i3 2120 with 32 GB of RAM and an $80 Intel board. Works awesome for the 6 or 7 VMs I have on there. It's for a lab so I doubt you'd be taxing the hardware that much. I had a dual quad xeon server and it didn't even touch the CPUs so I decided to build my own i3. Very low power usage, can't even hear it, and RAM is dirt cheap for regular DDR3. Also, cost of the build is very cheap. For storage I have a 4 bay eSATA Rosewill enclosure with 4 500 GB drives. I split my VMs up between them for better HDD performance. I use an old 160 GB drive for the OS. (Server 2008R2 running Hyper-V)
 
/usr/home said:
I use an i3 2120 with 32 GB of RAM and an $80 Intel board. Works awesome for the 6 or 7 VMs I have on there. It's for a lab so I doubt you'd be taxing the hardware that much. I had a dual quad xeon server and it didn't even touch the CPUs so I decided to build my own i3. Very low power usage, can't even hear it, and RAM is dirt cheap for regular DDR3. Also, cost of the build is very cheap. For storage I have a 4 bay eSATA Rosewill enclosure with 4 500 GB drives. I split my VMs up between them for better HDD performance. I use an old 160 GB drive for the OS. (Server 2008R2 running Hyper-V)
Click to expand...

I3 and tons of ram :) once you have the box you will start using it lots, the more ram you can get the better..
 
/usr/home said:
For storage I have a 4 bay eSATA Rosewill enclosure with 4 500 GB drives. I split my VMs up between them for better HDD performance. I use an old 160 GB drive for the OS. (Server 2008R2 running Hyper-V)
Click to expand...

That is an interesting solution using eSATA. I was going to ask how you did it because I wasn't sure vSphere could do that, but then I saw Hyper-V. How do you like Hyper-V?
 
ashman said:
I would turn your AMD Phenom system into an ESXi box and virtualize the other two, then use one of the other two boxes as your windows machine. Not sure if all the hardware in the Phenom box is ESXi compatible but you can easily google the the motherboard model to see if anyone has installed ESXi on it.
Click to expand...

I think this is what is going to happen. Unless I can talk the "boss" into buying the Optiplex from Dash...

The motherboard is a gigabyte UD5 890FX. I have had ESXi 5 on it before, it just hates the storage controller. So I would need a nice one of those. Preferably hardware RAID. I don't need anything TOO fancy. Chances are I would just pop like 2x500GB and a couple 1-2TB in there for file serving. Any recommendations anyone?
 
Perc 6i from dell boxes, you can pick em up on ebay around 100 bucks, make sure to get the cable and battery with it, they are basicall the "Standard" most of us doing whitebox use.
 
xtropx said:
That is an interesting solution using eSATA. I was going to ask how you did it because I wasn't sure vSphere could do that, but then I saw Hyper-V. How do you like Hyper-V?
Click to expand...

I like it a lot. It's simple and to the point. I've tried ESXi and Xen, but I found that I just like Hyper-V a bit better. People do the whole "but it uses a full OS underneath and takes up system resources." Mine uses like a GB of RAM and never even touches the CPU. I found that even ESXi took up about half a GB of RAM. I'm very happy with Hyper-V.
 
Or a Perc 5i even, I have also used the Adaptec 2410SA however its SATA I so its slower, but supported under ESXi, takes four drives and will do RAID 5, its also a PCI controller.
 
/usr/home said:
I like it a lot. It's simple and to the point. I've tried ESXi and Xen, but I found that I just like Hyper-V a bit better. People do the whole "but it uses a full OS underneath and takes up system resources." Mine uses like a GB of RAM and never even touches the CPU. I found that even ESXi took up about half a GB of RAM. I'm very happy with Hyper-V.
Click to expand...

one thing I miss about Hyper-v, is it's easier to backup your host & vm's..

USB drive attached to the host, POOF set-up windows backup or your own flavour of backup soft.
 
FWIW I have a Rackable 3U that I use as a file server as it's got 12 hot swap bays on it. It's an old Opteron 270 with 4gb running Server 2008R2 and works well.

What others have said about the original fans are true, they are loud. I replaced the factory fans with Noctua 80's and put a speed controller on the CPU fan (which had no effect on temps whatsoever but cut down greatly on the noise).

But if you're going to virtualize i'd go with the newer hardware as others have suggested. Dashpuppy's box would be a good start.
 
Oh man Xenserver is driving me nuts. It is awesome in the regard that ALL of my hard drives AND Ethernet devices are being detected - however, support for Linux is virtually (no pun intended) non-existent. I spent two hours last night trying to get a ubuntu server installed - finally get that going, decide to dist-upgrade and it breaks the whole thing. & I don't really understand the whole template idea either. Xen might be great for those pursuing a solution for Windows machines, but I am having my doubts. I am going to try an OS that is included by default in their "templates" but I might be looking into KVM on CentOS or something if I keep having trouble. Sad panda - Xen was looking promising.

/rant. Thanks for the ideas guys.
 
xtropx said:
Oh man Xenserver is driving me nuts. It is awesome in the regard that ALL of my hard drives AND Ethernet devices are being detected - however, support for Linux is virtually (no pun intended) non-existent. I spent two hours last night trying to get a ubuntu server installed - finally get that going, decide to dist-upgrade and it breaks the whole thing. & I don't really understand the whole template idea either. Xen might be great for those pursuing a solution for Windows machines, but I am having my doubts. I am going to try an OS that is included by default in their "templates" but I might be looking into KVM on CentOS or something if I keep having trouble. Sad panda - Xen was looking promising.

/rant. Thanks for the ideas guys.
Click to expand...

it took me 15 min to get ANY linux installed.. What are you having issues with ?

Let me guess you are choosing the template for linux ? then trying to install ?

YEP had same issue, i picked a windows one, and worked 100% :)

debian
ubuntu
BSD
Redhat
Mandrivia

List goes on, all working 100% on my unit.
 
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