Build or Buy

So I have about 500 dollars that I can spend on a computer. I just need a tower to run VMware (ESXI) and become my test lab. I am trying to decided on building a machine or buying one. If I do buy one, I think I will go with a T110 from Dell and just upgrade the ram. If I build one, I am going to go with some sort of I3 build so I can have an upgrade path. Which do yall think is better? More importantly which would you do?

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forkvoid

knwminus wrote: »

So I have about 500 dollars that I can spend on a computer. I just need a tower to run VMware (ESXI) and become my test lab. I am trying to decided on building a machine or buying one. If I do buy one, I think I will go with a T110 from Dell and just upgrade the ram. If I build one, I am going to go with some sort of I3 build so I can have an upgrade path. Which do yall think is better? More importantly which would you do?

Personally, I have a stack of 2650s and 2850s at the office (three 2650s, two 2850s, all on ESXi 3.5) and a single custom-built machine at home(Core 2 Duo Intel @ 3.x, 6GB memory, running Win2k8 R2 with Hyper-V.

The custom build at home cost me right around $500 for everything, I believe, but some of that is due to several 1TB disks. The stuff at the office cost us around $600, not including memory and disk upgrades.

RobertKaucher

If it were just a tower for me to goof around on, I would probably just buy it. Howerver, since it is for running VMWare and you want an upgrade path, I would certainly consider building. It is just a question of the control and flexibility you get from a build. Of course there are the usual issues of time spent and warranty: you break it, you get to keep the pieces.

Bl8ckr0uter

I am thinking of building because it would be a good experience anyway.

I am thinking of piecing my box around this CPU at first:
Newegg.com - Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz 4MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 73W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80616I3530

phantasm

Build. It's the only acceptable answer in the geek community.

Bl8ckr0uter

phantasm wrote: »

Build. It's the only acceptable answer in the geek community.

I guess your right. This sounds like a weekend project.

mikej412

phantasm wrote: »

Build. It's the only acceptable answer in the geek community.

Ditto

forkvoid

phantasm wrote: »

Build. It's the only acceptable answer in the geek community.

I dunno about that... a rack of R910s is pretty dang sexy and totally acceptable. A shelf of whitebox towers just looks boring and half-arse.

Bl8ckr0uter

I guess I am going to have to figure out how to stretch my budget.

RobertKaucher

knwminus wrote: »

I guess I am going to have to figure out how to stretch my budget.

Have you looked at the Systemax stuff from TigerDirect? They are pretty solid and can be customized/built.

shaqazoolu

I would build for the simple fact that it is much more fun. Not to mention you also run the risk of learning something new.

networker050184

If you build it they will come......

darkerosxx

knwminus wrote: »

I am thinking of building because it would be a good experience anyway.

I am thinking of piecing my box around this CPU at first:
Newegg.com - Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz 4MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 73W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80616I3530

I'm no expert, but I would suggest getting as many cores as you can if you're going to be virtualizing.

keenon

knwminus wrote: »

So I have about 500 dollars that I can spend on a computer. I just need a tower to run VMware (ESXI) and become my test lab. I am trying to decided on building a machine or buying one. If I do buy one, I think I will go with a T110 from Dell and just upgrade the ram. If I build one, I am going to go with some sort of I3 build so I can have an upgrade path. Which do yall think is better? More importantly which would you do?

The one I built last year which maybe cheaper this year had ran about 450 but maybe 550 after adding quad nic cards

AMD Phenom X4 9750 2.4G
4GB ram
320gb HDD

tpatt100

TigerDirect who I bought stuff from for years back when I built my own has a great selection of last year model computers for really cheap. Add another stick of RAM and your done.

I swore off building my own but my next machine I am going back to building. Mainly for control of hardware. My XPS 420 I bought a while back has issues with ATI drivers because Dell won't issue Windows 7 drivers for it only Vista which causes BSOD when you install graphic drivers.

I doubt I will save money though because I am pretty picky and I like machines that are ultra quiet so I will probably spend a few hundred on the case alone.

Bl8ckr0uter

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Have you looked at the Systemax stuff from TigerDirect? They are pretty solid and can be customized/built.

I have not. I guess I will need to take a look.

earweed

I built my own recently for around $500 Core i5, MOBO, PS, 4 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD
I skimped om the RAM as I was short funds but I can add more. I had a box and 3 smaller HDD's laying around so now I have a nice comp for labbing. I'm still using this old one to surf the web and stuff.

Bl8ckr0uter

I would probably skip out on hdd size to get more ram.

earweed

I thought about that but decided to just get a big HDD as that will eventually ne my main comp if I ever wear this one out. I had 4 spots to put HDDs in and I've got 4 extra slots for more RAM. I've got 3 224 GB HDD's in the other HD slots so I'll never run out of drive space. I'm putting everything that I'm not already using from my MSDN and Dreamspark accounts on them while I can before I finish up at WGU.

Bl8ckr0uter

earweed wrote: »

I thought about that but decided to just get a big HDD as that will eventually ne my main comp if I ever wear this one out. I had 4 spots to put HDDs in and I've got 4 extra slots for more RAM. I've got 3 224 GB HDD's in the other HD slots so I'll never run out of drive space. I'm putting everything that I'm not already using from my MSDN and Dreamspark accounts on them while I can before I finish up at WGU.

I'm going to try to build it with at least 6gm of ram or so to start so I might have to skip on the hdd size for now. I have a 1tb external drive but the casing broke during the move. The drive is in ok so I am going to remove it from the remaining casing and make it an internal drive. Hopefully it will work lol.

MentholMoose

For a virtualization host the performance of the components needs to be balanced carefully so that one component doesn't bottleneck the others. If you get a fast CPU and a lot of RAM, but skimp out on the disk, then a lot of that money spent on CPU and RAM will be wasted because the disk will bottleneck the VMs much sooner than CPU and RAM.

Buying disks is complicated by the trade-offs among size, space, and price. For disks, you usually need IOPS more than space, which unfortunately doesn't come cheap. For example, you are better off with 4x250GB drives than with 1x1TB drive because the four drives and thus four spindles will have many more IOPS available.

If you really don't need a lot of space, get an SSD. You may have to be creative with managing the space, for example by using linked clone functionality for VM disks, and aggressively deleting unnecessary VMs and data. Unfortunately a good 120GB SSD would eat about half of your $500 budget.

Bl8ckr0uter

Man this blows. I might wait a few months and double my budget (or even triple it). I kinda wanted to do it this month because I start school next month and I need something to do my labs and stuff. My current machine sucks ass

dynamik

MentholMoose wrote: »

For a virtualization host the performance of the components needs to be balanced carefully so that one component doesn't bottleneck the others. If you get a fast CPU and a lot of RAM, but skimp out on the disk, then a lot of that money spent on CPU and RAM will be wasted because the disk will bottleneck the VMs much sooner than CPU and RAM.

Buying disks is complicated by the trade-offs among size, space, and price. For disks, you usually need IOPS more than space, which unfortunately doesn't come cheap. For example, you are better off with 4x250GB drives than with 1x1TB drive because the four drives and thus four spindles will have many more IOPS available.

If you really don't need a lot of space, get an SSD. You may have to be creative with managing the space, for example by using linked clone functionality for VM disks, and aggressively deleting unnecessary VMs and data. Unfortunately a good 120GB SSD would eat about half of your $500 budget.

I'd say that's dead-on for the enterprise, but for home it's really not that bad. Like you said, spindles > space. I just loaded up on 160GBs (smallest Newegg had) and distributed the VMs as best I could between them. You don't need a high-performance RAID array or anything.

MentholMoose

Well you can always build something now, and just make sure it is upgradeable. If you want 6GB at some point (3x 2GB DIMMs), just get 2GB (1x 2GB DIMM) now and add more as necessary. VMware ESX(i) has fantastic memory management and optimization technology (4.1 even added memory compression), so it won't be too bad. Also adding disks later is not a problem. You can buy a slow disk now and put everything on it, then later on get something fast and move the VMs to it. Mainly you will just have to commit to buying a CPU you want to keep. Even that's not completely necessary since you can buy one now and sell it later (hopefully) at not too much of a loss.

MentholMoose

dynamik wrote: »

I'd say that's dead-on for the enterprise, but for home it's really not that bad. Like you said, spindles > space. I just loaded up on 160GBs (smallest Newegg had) and distributed the VMs as best I could between them. You don't need a high-performance RAID array or anything.

That's a good solution. Overall it will depend on what you are running in the lab. A few VMs on one disk is possible as long as nothing too taxing is running, and there especially shouldn't be anything disk-intensive running on multiple VMs simultaneously.

Bl8ckr0uter

MentholMoose wrote: »

That's a good solution. Overall it will depend on what you are running in the lab. A few VMs on one disk is possible as long as nothing too taxing is running, and there especially shouldn't be anything disk-intensive running on multiple VMs simultaneously.

I'm thinking of running at least 2-3 Windows/*nix servers and clients. I am also thinking of adding a honey pot but that won't be for a while. Basically a place for me to play around with NIX and windows technologies.

garv221

I would buy a new used server from Ebay.

ipconfig.all

yeah buy a used rack server from ebay or something, much cheaper and better.

Bl8ckr0uter

garv221 wrote: »

I would buy a new used server from Ebay.

I want to build a machine anyway but I am not sure if I want to build this machine. We will see. I will have to look at the cost benefit soon.

Bl8ckr0uter

ipconfig.all wrote: »

yeah buy a used rack server from ebay or something, much cheaper and better.

All though I would like something rack mounted so I can get all that stuff off my floor. Decisions decisions.

Heero

unless you want a rack mounted server, you are better off building your own. You can then maximize processors/ram while going as cheap as you can on other stuff, and this would suit you well.