VMWare EXSi 5.5

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steelodon

Weaksauce
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Apr 27, 2008
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I am going to start dabbling more with VMware. I recently purchased an HP Proliant DL360 G6 with 12GB RAM and 2 250GB HDDs. Do I need to add more RAM? What would be the best way to install VMware EXSi? What would be a good starter server OS?
 
I'd go to 32GB if you can. ESXi runs fine off a usb stick. Which OS? Depends on what you are most comfortable with...
 
It really depends on what your wanting to do. Overall, VMware itself is not that are hard to get up and running.

For me I'm using ESXi to build my home lab. Which is right now running on a old PC that I had.
 
steelodon said:
I am going to start dabbling more with VMware. I recently purchased an HP Proliant DL360 G6 with 12GB RAM and 2 250GB HDDs. Do I need to add more RAM? What would be the best way to install VMware EXSi? What would be a good starter server OS?
Click to expand...

Vmware's hypervisor uses very little ram, maybe a couple hundred MB to do what it needs to. You can easily install it from a disc to one drive and it will leave you a couple hundred gigs to install your VMs on.

As said it's a simple install, so to keep it simple just pop the disc into the server, and click next a few times and you'll have a system ready to go. Then copy over an ISO or two of whatever you want and install it into a VM. You have plenty of ram for a few VMs as it's not really an issue running Server 2012 R2 with 4GB of memory. If you play around with server core you can get it into a smaller footprint than that. If you use a Linux server build that doesn't include a GUI you'll have no trouble with using 1GB of ram.
 
Instead of wasting HDD space for the hipervisor, buy yourself a 4GB SD card. The ProLiants have an SD card slot built onto the motherboard for this purpose.

I'm personally running the same server with ESXi 5.5 Update 2, 68GB of RAM, and 8x 300GB drives. The processors are 2x Quad core E5540 @ 2.53 Ghz.

As for a starter OS, just set up a basic copy of Server 2008 R2 or Server 2012 R2 and make it a domain controller.

I'm also running vCenter Server to manage the host. It makes life easier.
 
voyagerfan99 said:
Instead of wasting HDD space for the hipervisor, buy yourself a 4GB SD card. The ProLiants have an SD card slot built onto the motherboard for this purpose.

I'm personally running the same server with ESXi 5.5 Update 2, 68GB of RAM, and 8x 300GB drives. The processors are 2x Quad core E5540 @ 2.53 Ghz.

As for a starter OS, just set up a basic copy of Server 2008 R2 or Server 2012 R2 and make it a domain controller.

I'm also running vCenter Server to manage the host. It makes life easier.
Click to expand...

This.
 
Instead of wasting money on a physical server, just beef up your desktop with additional RAM and run a nested hypervisor for learning.
 
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