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Systems Engineer new to virtual computing, need advice

G

glowtraq

n00b
Joined
Mar 10, 2006
Messages
46
Hello I'm fairly new to virtual computing (vsphere) and wanted to know what type of hardware would you guys recommend for a beginner. I have a budget of 1000 Dollars, I was thinking of buying hardware from say Dell or HP, however, I'm all about learning from the ground up and hope I can build my own if possible, including the necessary storage. I'm currently studying to become a Systems Engineer and have been playing with vmware workstation, however it's eating up system. Some lab scenarios especially the security ones sometimes compose of up to 2 servers and 4 workstations. Are there kits available for beginners? or could you guys recommend a starter system (oem or not). I've never built a server in my life, pretty interested in starting in the right direction. Any advice would greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
 
Hi, thank you for your reply, I'm currently interning at an investment bank, they're using dl380's and above, I would rather learn to build the hardware similar or close to a real server, rather than paying amazon to use their service, while it's a great service, it's not what I'm currently looking for.
 
If I understand this correctly you're looking to purchase/build a server capable of running an ESXi lab (to use with vSphere)? I would suggest picking up parts to make a whitebox if that's the case as even an entry level HP server will be over your $1000 hardware budget.

I am running the following with several VM's currently:

Intel BOXDQ57TM - $120
Intel i5 650 CPU - $180
8 GB DDR3 kit - $120

There's already built in video and the ethernet needs to be tweaked since it's not on the ESXi installer disc (there's a thread on vm-help.com to get it working). Toss in a hard drive, case and PSU (assuming you don't already have a spare lying around) and you're good to go for under a grand.

Mine currently runs my pfSense router, Untangle UTM (for testing purposes), my PBX, and file download box. You're always going to run out of RAM before you run out of CPU clocks so you don't need a 4 core 8 thread Xeon for lab purposes in most cases.
 
Are you trying to just setup a windows lab IN vmwre, or are you trying to setup a vmware lab for learning vsphere etc

For a vmware lab environment, I would build two cheap whiteboxes with dual or quad cores and 4+GB ram, run them both diskless and build an additional low cost openfiler box for shared storage between the two hosts with iscsi or nfs. A supported SAS/SCSI raid controller is the most expensive part of building a esxi box with local storage, but you can run a "san" setup with softraid/onboard raid etc and host it up via iscsi which will enable you to use a lot of the cooler features in vmware like vmotion and HA
 
I just started a new job and I'm in the same boat. As part of the job, I do a lot of lab preparation to teach workshops and courses for customers, as well as self-study.

I currently have my gaming box with only 6GB of memory. Right now I'm using Virtual Box to run all of my VMs. I run a Vyatta VM to handle all of my subnets and routing. I've got 4 2008 R2 VMs for DCs (testing and self-study). There's also some clustering stuff, which requires that I run a 2008R2 Storage Server VM (for iSCSI). I'm constantly running at 90 - 95% memory utilization. It's frustrating. I have to shut down my test DCs when I want to test clustering stuff, etc.

Here's my suggestion: Get a lot of memory. If you spend the money on one thing, spend it on that. I don't think you need server class hardware. You'll spend a lot of money if you buy it. I would just build a machine like you would a normal box, but gear it toward virtualization.

My solution is the following, running Hyper-V on 2008 R2:
Core i7 CPU (Whatever Microcenter has for $200)
ASUS Sabertooth (supports 24GB of memory) - $200
Corsair AX750 - $179
OCZ Vertex 2 60GB (OS) - $129
G.Skill Ripjaw 6x4GB Kit - $379
WD 2TB Digital-AV disk (x4) - $119 ea. - you can probably go with less or smaller drives.

Then I'll throw it in whatever case I have lying around with some low-end video card. If you go with some smaller disks (like 2x1TB) and ditch the SSD, you can probably build that for around $1,000.

My goal is to be able to run my Windows Home Server, Vyatta, my web dev box (IIS and SQL), Microsoft Threat Management Gateway, and SCVMM, as well as do all of my lab and workshop stuff without having to worry about memory. I'm hoping that this setup will do it for me.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
 
just keep in mind that vmware will not run on the setup above, if you're going to run Hyper-V then softraid is fine, if you want to run vmware you'll need a supported raid controller.
 
surrealillusion

Hey surrealillusion thanks for the reply, I'm planning running vpshere, I'll definitely consider your hardware specs, I'm very excited about the iseries processors and wonder if they're powerful as the xeons.

Mak

Thanks, I really like the T410's and really leaning towards them. If you guys were to choose oem, between the following two choices, which would you choose?

Review:
http://www.dell.com/downloads/globa...-to-Windows-Server-Performance-Whitepaper.pdf

1.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859105606&cm_re=ML110-_-59-105-606-_-Product

2.http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfb/serve....aspx?refid=server-poweredge-t410&s=dfb&cs=28

Danman

Thanks, after doing some additional homework, for the extra bit of cash, many counter parts blow the HP ProLiant AMD Athlon II NEO N36L 1.3 GHz 1GB DDR3 MicroServer out of the water.

aaronearles

I'm trying to invest in hardware for expansion, either custom built or oem - that can serve at the moment as a test bed which can handle 8 or more guests, and at the same time allow for expandability down the road for a vmware lab to test vmotion and HA. In addition to the 8 windows guests, I plan on adding 1 to 2 more linux guests for testing switching and routing protocols.

Do you think the Dell T410's or the ML110's can provide this or am I better off building white boxes?

In terms of storage, can I do the T410 or the ML110 and point it to an iOmega NAS via iscsi?

mmtom

Hey, thanks for your suggestions on the specs, definitely going to consider them. That's allot of power and a ton of ram, considering all your requirements, I'm pretty sure you would be able to have all those services running without an issue. Are the i7's better than Xeon processors when it comes to working with virtualization?
 
glowtraq said:
aaronearles

I'm trying to invest in hardware for expansion, either custom built or oem - that can serve at the moment as a test bed which can handle 8 or more guests, and at the same time allow for expandability down the road for a vmware lab to test vmotion and HA. In addition to the 8 windows guests, I plan on adding 1 to 2 more linux guests for testing switching and routing protocols.

Do you think the Dell T410's or the ML110's can provide this or am I better off building white boxes?

In terms of storage, can I do the T410 or the ML110 and point it to an iOmega NAS via iscsi?
Click to expand...

With your current budget in mind, you'd get a lot more resources for your money spent with the white box, unless you find a good deal on some oem boxes.

Yes you can use the oem stuff with iscsi/nfs to a NAS device, provided the nas supports one of the two.

You'll want to load up on ram, but also disk spindles, obviously you'll want some sort of raid that performs fault tolerance, and because it's for a lab you probably don't need to worry too much about disk capacity, I would probably run RAID10 with as many disks as you can throw at it, even if they're smaller cheaper disks... unless of course you need big storage as well.

If you do go the whitebox route, just make sure you do your research on the VMware community HCL before making a purchase, for a lab you don't need to be officially supported, but it would be good to verify that others run similar hardware without any issues.
 
As soon as you say you want to run vSphere on the lab box your options narrow. vSphere doesn't have a huge HCL like Windows and Hyper-V. I suggest you click my blog link on my post and read the posts I did on my vSphere lab build.
 
I another suggestion and one i'd recommend if you want to save money is to check out Geeks.com. For example you could pick up a Dell Power Edge with a dualie Xeon 2.8, 2GB ram and 2x250GB drives for less than $160.00+ shipping.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SC1420-DX280-NOOS-2R&cat=SYS

Order many a server from Geeks.com for clients and I've never had an issue. Hell if I had the money now (Curse you christmas) I'd get the one I mentioned right now. Pretty sure those are capable of supporting VT-d as well.

@NetJunkie - I agree with the HCL, however like you mentioned as soon as you drop any hope for onboard NICs (Why in the first place) and software RAID (again, why would you use software RAID?).

Again that server i mentioned is on that list.... I should play Santa for myself and order that ;)
 
I built a couple of ESXi whiteboxes a couple of months back. You can get a lot more box if you go AMD processors. RAM is more important than CPU speed.

The following build which supports HA, vMotion, DRS with power management, with shared NFS storage (the Iomega ix2-200 is VMWare certified for NFS and iSCSI scarily enough) is just $1050. If you don't need HA, drop 2 of the Intel adapters and you are under $1000.

whitebox.jpg
 
I think you mean VMware FT for those Intel NICs. HA has no requirement for I/O.
 
Shadowhaxor said:
I another suggestion and one i'd recommend if you want to save money is to check out Geeks.com. For example you could pick up a Dell Power Edge with a dualie Xeon 2.8, 2GB ram and 2x250GB drives for less than $160.00+ shipping.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SC1420-DX280-NOOS-2R&cat=SYS

Order many a server from Geeks.com for clients and I've never had an issue. Hell if I had the money now (Curse you christmas) I'd get the one I mentioned right now. Pretty sure those are capable of supporting VT-d as well.

@NetJunkie - I agree with the HCL, however like you mentioned as soon as you drop any hope for onboard NICs (Why in the first place) and software RAID (again, why would you use software RAID?).

Again that server i mentioned is on that list.... I should play Santa for myself and order that ;)
Click to expand...

This old out dated machine would eat more hydro power than what it is worth, what a beast!
 
aaronearles

Hey, thank you so much for the details on expansive storage, I really appreciate it, I'll probably consider building an open filer box at some point, this seems to be a very interesting project. I've seen some crazy storage solutions such as NetApp and EMC. These are amazing technologies and would love to create something similar. Might I ask, what is VT-d?

NetJunkie

As vmware is the epiphany for most corporations I would rather get started with it soon as possible. Many argue while hyper-v is great, it lacks the harden security you find with vshpere, I know many would argue against this and I would rather not take sides. On the other hand, I will definitely love to try hyper-v.

Shadowhaxor

Thank You for the server suggestions, these seem to be great and cheap, however at this point, I'm really leaning towards learning to put together my own systems.

Nessus

Hello, thank you for putting together such a great list, I'm thinking about taking the dive and going with this build, it's super cheap and you get so much as you stated. If anyone thinks otherwise please let me know. I don't really know much about whiteboxes, I recently watched a video from hak5 about putting together a system, however it's a bit above my budget.

http://revision3.com/hak5/whitebox

Thanks again for all the replies, I've learned a great deal so far.
 
glowtraq said:
what is VT-d?
Click to expand...

VT-D is Intel's version of incorporating virtualization technology into their processors. Short end of the stick is basically you want an Intel process that supports VT-D / VT-X or an AMD processor that supports AMD-V, which allows the virtualization software to better utlize the (hardware virtualization) processor/s vs using software virtualization and causing performance related issues.
 
Shadowhaxor said:
VT-D is Intel's version of incorporating virtualization technology into their processors. Short end of the stick is basically you want an Intel process that supports VT-D / VT-X or an AMD processor that supports AMD-V, which allows the virtualization software to better utlize the (hardware virtualization) processor/s vs using software virtualization and causing performance related issues.
Click to expand...

and is required to run ESXi 4 or higher, and for MS Hyper-V
 
plus, you cannot run 64bit VMs on a box that doesn't support virtualization....


btw the PE SC1420 from geeks does NOT support virtualization in the CPU, and the chipset in it is incompatible w/ any modern CPU that does...

i've got one right now with a single 3.0ghz (these are netburst xeons btw) and 6GB ram at an office and since i'm moving everything to VMs this thing is pretty darn useless... i'll probably still put centos and vmware server on it, but i'll only be able to host 32bit VMs... and as i'm mostly moving everything to 2k8R2, and 2k8R2 doesn't even come in 32bit... it definitely limits my options with this thing...
 
glowtraq said:
aaronearles

Nessus

Hello, thank you for putting together such a great list, I'm thinking about taking the dive and going with this build, it's super cheap and you get so much as you stated.
Click to expand...

No problem. I buillt that out a couple of months back and still had the items in my wishlist that I was using to compare builds.

I think I ended up switching out to a case/power supply combo the egg had as one of their 48 hours deals at the time, and I built a Core 2 box I already had on hand as an openfiler NFS server. I'd like to move to one of the ix2 or ix4 Iomega devices for my NFS server at some point.

I have friends using one or the other, and they are really happy with them. Way less power draw than what I'm using.

If you have something else you can reuse as an NFS server. Going to an AM3 mobo that could eventually hold 16 GB, but starting with 8 GB should be doable for under $1k.
 
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