Cheapest server to run ESX 4 for testing

We will be rolling out ESX 4.x in my company sometime next month. My co-workers and I have been charged with learning about as much visualization as we possibly can. All the 64 bit servers I looked at which are capable of running ESX 4 are very expensive. Is there a cheap server/computer out there that I can buy just for testing this stuff?

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Hypntick

Since you're looking for just a study platform, used is a great option. I personally picked up a power edge 1950 on eBay for about 500 bucks. Provided that's in your budget, it's really one of the better deals i've found.

Everyone

To learn VMWare better, I've setup ESXi 4 inside of VMWare Workstation 7 with Windows 7 as the host OS. I created a virtual SAN using freeNAS for ESXi to connect to. The only thing is you can't run 64 bit operating systems on ESX doing it this way, 32 bit only. Not a big deal since the point of it is to learn ESX/vSphere.

I run it all from my home built desktop, Asus P7P55D-E Pro motherboard, Intel Core i7 860 CPU, 8 GB of DDR 1600 RAM, a pair of 1 TB hard drives, and a Radeon 5850 graphics card. I want to say it all cost me around $1200 when I built it almost 2 years ago now.

If you were going to get a dedicated test lab server, you could get a tower for less than $1k, or a 1U rack mount for less than $2k. A single Quad Core CPU with a fair amount of RAM will get the job done.

mrblackmamba343

We have an old HP ProLiant DL380 G4 with dual intel Xeon processors with 4 Gigs of ram. I installed VM workstation 7 last week but when I created a vm to install ESX, I had an error "can only install on 64 bit blah blah blah ".

Windows 2003 32 bit is the host OS
Everyone I have talked to says I should be able to run ESX4 at on this box

HP DL380 G4 Dual Xeon 3.4ghz 4gb ram 6 x 36gb

Tackle

mrblackmamba343 wrote: »

We have an old HP ProLiant DL380 G4 with dual intel Xeon processors with 4 Gigs of ram. I installed VM workstation 7 last week but when I created a vm to install ESX, I had an error "can only install on 64 bit blah blah blah ".

Windows 2003 32 bit is the host OS
Everyone I have talked to says I should be able to run ESX4 at on this box

HP DL380 G4 Dual Xeon 3.4ghz 4gb ram 6 x 36gb

I didn't look up the specs to see if it is even able to run ESX or ESXi, but my question is:
Have you enabled virtualizaiton in the bios?

ColbyG

Dell T110 was the best deal I've found to run ESX. Though, if you're just trying to learn, you can run it in a VM with Workstation or Server (or whatever).

Edit: Oops, someone already said the running it in a VM thing, lol.

Everyone

mrblackmamba343 wrote: »

We have an old HP ProLiant DL380 G4 with dual intel Xeon processors with 4 Gigs of ram. I installed VM workstation 7 last week but when I created a vm to install ESX, I had an error "can only install on 64 bit blah blah blah ".

Windows 2003 32 bit is the host OS
Everyone I have talked to says I should be able to run ESX4 at on this box

HP DL380 G4 Dual Xeon 3.4ghz 4gb ram 6 x 36gb

Host OS that VMWare Workstation 7 is running on has to be 64 bit in order to run ESXi 4.1 inside of Workstation 7.

If this server is just going to be for playing around with ESX why not blow Server 2003 off of it and install ESX natively? The hardware you have should work, no need to have Server 2003 on there or involve Workstation 7 at all.

mrblackmamba343

I installed ESX directly on the server and it worked.....

Xantcha

I've got ESXi 4.1 running on a stink normal HP dc7900 pc, E8500 CPU and 4GB of RAM.

Works well and does what I need it to.

millworx

mrblackmamba343 wrote: »

We have an old HP ProLiant DL380 G4 with dual intel Xeon processors with 4 Gigs of ram. I installed VM workstation 7 last week but when I created a vm to install ESX, I had an error "can only install on 64 bit blah blah blah ".

Windows 2003 32 bit is the host OS
Everyone I have talked to says I should be able to run ESX4 at on this box

HP DL380 G4 Dual Xeon 3.4ghz 4gb ram 6 x 36gb

I've got a whole slew of these at work (Same as Cisco MCS 7800). You need to go into the BIOS which is very very slow and turn on processor virtualization which will enable the 64 bit capability. This server works great for playing around with esx. We use it for our lab process. Runs ESX4 great directly on the hardware.