Lab Server

royal

So I've been talking to HeroPsycho in IM and we've been looking over a server for me to build for home. So far, we've specced out the following but figured I'd run it buy you guys first as you may have seen better deals on specific pieces of hardware I'm looking at:

2x (Raid1) - $84.99 each - Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

$53.99 each after rebate - 2x (8GB memory total) OCZ SLI-Ready Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227269

$189.99 - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80562Q6600 - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=q6600&x=0&y=0

$79.99 - ASUS P5K SE EPU LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=p5k&x=0&y=0

The motherboard supports both ESX and ESX3i. I still need to find a NIC that supports ESX and ESX3i. Anything but Broadcom!

Any good suggestions on good power supplies for cheap price?

dynamik

What do you want to do with this?

If you want a little better disk performance for SATA drives, you might want to check out WD's Velicoraptors. That's going to jack up the price quite a bit though.

That seems right in line as far as pricing goes. You might be able to save a few dollars by scrounging around, but I'd just save time and go with Newegg's service.

royal

Ya I was thinking about those disks, too much $$$.

jbaello

I have 2 WD raptor setup as Raid 0, their pretty good on virtualization, it's almost like it's running on it's own hardware, even I am multitasking

royal

jbaello wrote:

I have 2 WD raptor setup as Raid 0, their pretty good on virtualization, it's almost like it's running on it's own hardware, even I am multitasking

I was debating on 4 disks so I could get both the striping performance and mirroring redundancy. But more $$$$. There's no way I'm not going to do Raid 1 though. I am going to build so many different labs that there's no way I will want that data to die due to 1 disk failure.

astorrs

Its funny you're specking out almost the same box as I have, slightly different components (mine is about 9 months old) but essentially the same (quad proc, 8GB ram, 2 x SATA2 RAID-1). You should be fine with the 2 disks unless you really plan on generating disk i/o's (like running JetStress all the time or something to simulate a real environment ). Especially with the low overhead of ESX.

jbaello

That processor will definitely whoop some ass, I've seen gooks at work render a car using Maya 2008. They got dual CPU both quad = 8 cores of awesomeness...

HeroPsycho

dynamik wrote:

What do you want to do with this?

If you want a little better disk performance for SATA drives, you might want to check out WD's Velicoraptors. That's going to jack up the price quite a bit though.

That seems right in line as far as pricing goes. You might be able to save a few dollars by scrounging around, but I'd just save time and go with Newegg's service.

Those WD disks are double platter drives for better performance. They're not Raptors, but they kick serious butt and cost way less, with more storage space. I'm running 4x in RAID10, and it's good times!

HeroPsycho

royal wrote:

Any good suggestions on good power supplies for cheap price?

don't worriez, i haz u

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341010

royal

Thanks. Just ordered 4GB of memory from newegg and will have my other buddy order the other 4GB. I also just ordered the CPU and PSU due to the rebate. When I get back from Wisconsin next Friday so I don't have all my equipment just sitting on my doorstep, I'll start ordering the rest of the equipment since none of the other stuff has a rebate.

Thinking about going with another nine hundred case for the 120mm fan and 220mm fan goodness.

Also, I'm not sure if that mobo that I have in my original post. I can't find anywhere if it supports Raid or not. Not in Newegg specs, not in Google, and not even in the manual screenshots/text.

Here's the supported list of mobos:
http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3.5/Whiteboxes_SATA_Controllers_for_ESX_3.5_3i.htm

Annoying that there's no real other boards that show they support both ESX and ESXi. Granted I'm assuming most of them do but aren't officially marked as working on the list due to lack of testing.

darkerosxx

Do people use the stuff you're building that server with in production environments? Just curious...

astorrs

darkerosxx wrote:

Do people use the stuff you're building that server with in production environments? Just curious...

The sad answer is yes. I've found it's usually the small shops <30 employees with just a server or two and 1 in house IT guy - he figures since he builds his PCs at home he can do the same at work. I usually get called to fix things after the disaster has occurred.

royal is just building a test lab for his own use and I have done the same, dropping $5k on a proper server for your house is kinda silly after all.

tiersten

astorrs wrote:

royal is just building a test lab for his own use and I have done the same, dropping $5k on a proper server for your house is kinda silly after all.

I bought some HP dual core Opteron servers that were on special offer. They were £99 each and I just added more RAM. Supported by ESX and has proper IPMI support + iLO.

HeroPsycho

royal wrote:

Thanks. Just ordered 4GB of memory from newegg and will have my other buddy order the other 4GB. I also just ordered the CPU and PSU due to the rebate. When I get back from Wisconsin next Friday so I don't have all my equipment just sitting on my doorstep, I'll start ordering the rest of the equipment since none of the other stuff has a rebate.

Thinking about going with another nine hundred case for the 120mm fan and 220mm fan goodness.

Also, I'm not sure if that mobo that I have in my original post. I can't find anywhere if it supports Raid or not.

Watch the OCZ rebates. You must send them in pretty quickly after ordering usually.

Again, I'd take a look at the Coolermaster Centurian 5 case if you're trying to keep this inexpensive. For $65 shipped, you get a front 80mm and a back 120mm (fans included), both very quiet, plenty of room for drives, easy to work with as it's mostly tool-less. Well constructed. The entire front is actually an air vent with an air filter. Looks pretty good, too.

Also, I strongly suspect you will not be able to use RAID with that mobo with ESXi.

HeroPsycho

Not the exact antec case you wanted but it's only $70 shipped...

http://shop4.frys.com/product/4470306