Your home ESX server lab hardware specs?

what reason of deploying fancycache in beta? if you use smb 3.0 windows will do caching itself the same for read only cache as "csv cache" and starwind has own built-in cache with ram and flash in beta

does fancycache work better? any benchmarks numbers to share? did you try velobit cache?

Lab is expanding...

2x HP v1910-24g network switches

3x VMware 5.1 hosts

AMD Phenom II X6 1045T CPU
32GB RAM
Intel PRO/1000 VT quad port NIC

2x Hyper-V 2012 hosts

AMD Phenom II X4 925
16GB RAM
Intel PRO/1000 CT, Broadcom 5708 Gb NICs

Microsoft Server 2012 File server

AMD Athlon II X2 240 CPU
32GB RAM
Intel PRO/1000 VT quad port NIC
2x80GB RAID 1 OS
2x240GB RAID 1 Intel 330 SSDs for level 2 caching
8x2TB Samsung 7200RPM SATA drives in Storage Pool for file shares and iSCSI
Starwind for iSCSI
Fancycache 0.8 Beta installed for RAM and SSD caching on iSCSI shares
 
starwind makes sense if you want better performance because of caching ms target does not do, because of deduplication windows server 2012 cannot do for live vhds and because of fault tolerance ms target cannot do w/o shared storage like fc or sas or again iscsi :)

with hyper-v 3.0 and test & development no production you can skip using iscsi at all and put vhds on smb 3.0 share

I am still a super noob when it comes to any of this stuff which is why I was wondering.
Thanks for this info since I have only used 2008R2 and briefly checked out 2012.

I havnt played with hyper-v really yet though I guess it wouldnt hurt.
 
what reason of deploying fancycache in beta? if you use smb 3.0 windows will do caching itself the same for read only cache as "csv cache" and starwind has own built-in cache with ram and flash in beta

does fancycache work better? any benchmarks numbers to share? did you try velobit cache?

Fancycache does layer 1 RAM caching and layer 2 SSD caching. I can't use SMB with my VMware cluster.

http://blogs.serioustek.net/post/2012/03/11/StarWind-iSCSI-vs-Microsoft-iSCSI-Part-1.aspx
 
give it a try

its still not even close as mature as esxi is but ms is definitely sliding into right direction

I am still a super noob when it comes to any of this stuff which is why I was wondering.
Thanks for this info since I have only used 2008R2 and briefly checked out 2012.

I havnt played with hyper-v really yet though I guess it wouldnt hurt.
 
Is 300W enough power for a basic ESXI host. Only going to have the motherboard cpu and ram with a usb flash stick as boot.
 
You need VT-x if you want to run 64bit nested virtual machines ESXi within ESXi. I'm not going to lay it out here when it's be done elsewhere:

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/09/having-difficulties-enabling-nested.html

Not only VT-x but also VT-x/EPT. I know this thing and I have test it already on a core i5-2500 where I have built a hyper-v cluster inside an ESXi with vm's running fine inside the hyper-v servers.

I am only asking if someone has checked that Celeron g540/550 or Pentium G630/640 actually has EPT capabilities as Intel says in ark.intel.com or it is just stated wrong in Intel's site . My question is so simple. I just want to built a home lab as cheap as possible and they seem to be the cheapest(*) Intel cpu's with VT-x and VT-x/EPT features. That information I believe will be very helpful information for someone that doesn't want(or has) to spend a lot of money in a test rig for virtual server lab.


(*) I know that AMD E-350/450 has capabilities for such things, but it is not in my interest as in this platform I'll be limited in 16gb of RAM (not enough for my tests).
 
Asus RS300 E6/PS2. -Hyper V
Xeon x3430 32 gigs of ram
8 Nics.

HP Proliant G8 -ESXI
xeon e5 2620
64 gigs of ram
12 Nics.

SAN
Jetstor 716U
10 SAS Drives 1tb Raid 60
Raid 10 ZIL 4 Intel 520 240 GB SSD
Raid 0 Read 2 Intel 520 240 GB
Switch
HP Procurve 2510G 48

Router Sonicwall NSA 2400

Rack Compaq 24U rack

UPS TripLite 3000mxl2u
 
Lab is expanding...

2x HP v1910-24g network switches

3x VMware 5.1 hosts

AMD Phenom II X6 1045T CPU
32GB RAM
Intel PRO/1000 VT quad port NIC

2x Hyper-V 2012 hosts

AMD Phenom II X4 925
16GB RAM
Intel PRO/1000 CT, Broadcom 5708 Gb NICs

Microsoft Server 2012 File server

AMD Athlon II X2 240 CPU
32GB RAM
Intel PRO/1000 VT quad port NIC
2x80GB RAID 1 OS
2x240GB RAID 1 Intel 330 SSDs for level 2 caching
8x2TB Samsung 7200RPM SATA drives in Storage Pool for file shares and iSCSI
Starwind for iSCSI
Fancycache 0.8 Beta installed for RAM and SSD caching on iSCSI shares

Lab just got an unexpected upgrade today -- EMC NS-120 with 15x300GB 10k drives. The lab at work wanted it gone because one of the data movers is dead and to make room for more Netapp gear. I said I'd take it. :)
 
Lab just got an unexpected upgrade today -- EMC NS-120 with 15x300GB 10k drives. The lab at work wanted it gone because one of the data movers is dead and to make room for more Netapp gear. I said I'd take it. :)

Holy crap, that would be pretty sweet.

I would love to learn enough to work in a place surrounded by computers! :)
 
i wish i could justify the price premium of sas drives...nice pickup tho dude!
 
ESXI 5.1

ASRock Z77 EXTREME4-M
Intel I7-3770
Samsung 840 Pro 250GB
Intel Pro 1000/Dual Port NIC (EXPI9402PT)
Ripjaws X Series 32GB RAM

Everything works including vt-d. Waiting for my m1015 card to come in so I can experiment with Freenas.

Only thing that sucks is that ESX won't give me any system health information. From my limited ESX knowledge, its because the CIM is missing. Since ASRock does not provide any, is there a generic variant that can be used instead?

esx.png
 
Free Vsphere at the moment but moving to VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus as I need more than 32gb memory

MSI Z77MA-G45 mATX mainboard with VT-d support
Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2
G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1600Mhz (PC3 12800)
256GB crucial M4 SSD

VM's are mostly network security devices and a bunch of test boxes that only need 1-5gb of disk space:

1 x load balancer
1 x web filter
13 x Next gen firewalls
1 x Badstore web server
1 x Web Application Firewall
2 x Windows XP clients
1 x Windows 8 client
1 x Windows 2008 server
4 x Lightweight Linux
1 x Metsaploit system
1 x Linux media server

I need to expand this out with another Web App firewall for active/active HA, more NGFW's and some more windows hosts so I am going to move to a pair of Opteron 6218's I got on ebay for $111 and a dual socket G34 board like the ASUS KGPE-D16 with 64gb ram.

Another higher capacity SSD is planned but I am holding out as the prices drop so much all of the time and I have just enough space for now :)
 
I think I posted once up in here but whatever

Phenom X6 1055
16 gigs o ram (Will be 32 in the near future)
5 HDD's of random sizes

Used for: Few different labs for messing with Windows Servers and a few Linux machines are tossed in there too.

ESXi.PNG
 
Free Vsphere at the moment but moving to VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus as I need more than 32gb memory

MSI Z77MA-G45 mATX mainboard with VT-d support
Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2
G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1600Mhz (PC3 12800)
256GB crucial M4 SSD

VM's are mostly network security devices and a bunch of test boxes that only need 1-5gb of disk space:

1 x load balancer
1 x web filter
13 x Next gen firewalls
1 x Badstore web server
1 x Web Application Firewall
2 x Windows XP clients
1 x Windows 8 client
1 x Windows 2008 server
4 x Lightweight Linux
1 x Metsaploit system
1 x Linux media server

I need to expand this out with another Web App firewall for active/active HA, more NGFW's and some more windows hosts so I am going to move to a pair of Opteron 6218's I got on ebay for $111 and a dual socket G34 board like the ASUS KGPE-D16 with 64gb ram.

Another higher capacity SSD is planned but I am holding out as the prices drop so much all of the time and I have just enough space for now :)

What "next gen" Firewalls are you running?

I've been using some checkpoint virtual firewalls on EC2, but I'm curious of what you're running in a VMWare environment.
 
Microsoft Server 2012 File server

AMD Athlon II X2 240 CPU
32GB RAM
Intel PRO/1000 VT quad port NIC
2x80GB RAID 1 OS
2x240GB RAID 1 Intel 330 SSDs for level 2 caching
8x2TB Samsung 7200RPM SATA drives in Storage Pool for file shares and iSCSI
Starwind for iSCSI
Fancycache 0.8 Beta installed for RAM and SSD caching on iSCSI shares

Child of Wonder said:
Lab just got an unexpected upgrade today -- EMC NS-120 with 15x300GB 10k drives. The lab at work wanted it gone because one of the data movers is dead and to make room for more Netapp gear. I said I'd take it. :)

Wow. Now that I got my NS-120 fixed up (data mover was dead), updated, and purring like a kitten I created a single 8+1 RAID 5 group, a pair of LUNs each owned by a different SP, and created a file system. Put a Linux VM on an iSCSI datastore, NFS datastore, then back on my MS file server iSCSI and ran bonnie++ each time.

NS-120 NFS: 750 random seeks per second, ~65ms average latency
NS-120 iSCSI: 900 random seeks per second, ~45ms average latency
MS iSCSI: 2900 random seeks per second, ~12ms average latency

Funny that 8x modern SATA drives just crush 9x 10k FC drives from 2007.

Guess once I've had my fill of playing with the NS-120 I'll toss it up on Craigslist.
 
only if you consider built-in backdoors on security appliances "cool stuff" ;)

But it is neat you get to have all them talking in a lab environment.

Ahhh, I was waiting for that :)
Definitely embarrassing but the scope was far more limited than the media made it out to be.

The backdoor issue did not affect the Barracuda NG Firewall, Barracuda Firewall, Load or Link Balancers, Backup or Web Application Firewalls
 
Salvaged from old parts, my current VMware Home Lab consists of the following:

ESX 5.1
- Intel Celeron G530 @ 2.40GHz
- 8GB RAM
- 60 GB SSD local datastore
- 3.5 TB NFS datastore served via FreeNAS
- 10/100/1000 NIC

JJq0rnT.jpg


FreeNAS 8.3.0
- AMD Sempron 140
- 4GB RAM
- 3 x 2TB SAMSUNG SATA II
- 10/100/1000 NIC

JpUe3Vm.jpg


I'm currently running a bunch of Linux VMs with the root partition on the SSD datastore and /var or whatever needed on the NFS datastore via a second disk added to the VM. So far it's running like a champ, I usually give the VMs about 1GB of RAM for prod and for testing I use the recommended minimum from the distro/OS.
 
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I'm looking for a cheap RAID1 card for ESX.

Can someone let me know of any controller that is supported and costs less than 100$/€...
 
Yes, I am looking for a hardware card... Something that goes in PCIe...
 
well a card that supports hardware raid? or something to use as passthrough for software raid like ZFS?

For hardware raid depending on budget LSI and Areca are some of the most recommended ones that I've seen. the LSI side of things I'm most familiar with and depending on your use case I think a LSI 9260 would be good or the 92xx series.

For software the popular cards are LSI HBA cards flashed in IT mode so that there is not a bios but it just passes the drives attached to it to the OS which will do raid in software
 
I'm looking for a cheap RAID1 card for ESX.

Can someone let me know of any controller that is supported and costs less than 100$/€...
Well if you were in the USA I would say the Adaptec ASR-3405s are dirt cheap on ebay - like less than 30 bucks cheap. (ESXi 3.5 was the only one out when it came out though).

It's an older, slower model but mirroring doesn't require anything fancy.
 
Yea I see, can't get them cheap here... I guess I will go with IBM M1015 which I have a chance to get for 50€.

Matej
 
Yea I see, can't get them cheap here... I guess I will go with IBM M1015 which I have a chance to get for 50€.

Matej

where can you get m1015 for that price? from your name i assume you are from sk/cz. im looking for one card too, but new one is 100€+.
 
It's used and it's a special offer from a friend... Usually, they are around 120€ from germany where I buy them...
 
I was able to pick up a Adaptec ASR-5405 for $100 off ebay. I was patient though. If you not in a hurry I recommend setting up saved searches that email you weekly when someone posts a part your looking for. This is how I save some $$.
 
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