Probably the cheapest VCP5 lab ....

jibbajabba

Can't seem to stop thinking about getting the VCAP but nested setups don't do the job properly. They work in principal but not that great.

So I was thinking about buying at least two server, preferably three.

My current HP Microserver made me think



It clearly has enough oompf. But having only 8GB of RAM and such a low powered CPU probably means I can't do MUCH with it ..

Here's the plan

4 Microserver

1st - running Server 2008R2, ISCSI Target (to use as "SAN") and vCenter
2nd / 3rd - running vSphere 5, booting from USB, ISCSI storage attached to #1
4th - running vSphere 5, booting stateless, ISCSI storage attached to #1

Costs ... bear in mind, UK still offers cashback ...

4 Microserver = £999.04 - £400 cashback = £599.04
Ram upgrade = 8GB 4x £37 = £148
4GB flash drive = 3x £3.99 = £12.96

So the total bill (without licenses) : £759.96 / $1,227.06 including tax

Each Microserver here comes with 250GB HDD so three can be moved into the ISCSI / vCenter one.

Or, if faster storage is needed, I do what I did with my current Microserver.



Here I am using an Adaptec Raid card (3805), 4x2TB Green and 4x2.5" 300GB SAS 15k ... so the options are endless ..

But it needs to be cheap, so 4x250GB ISCSI setup has to be enough ... unfortunately to save money I won't be using a hardware raid card so it needs to use either the onboard raid (Raid10 at least) or dynamic drives inside of Windows ..

IF I need / want to play with the Storage Appliance then I might have to re-think .. but that is such a small part, I could do without...

Regardless, you can't beat £759.96 / $1,227.06 for four server .....

MentholMoose

Very nice! Those servers are a good value.

Everyone

How exactly do nested setups not do the job properly?

So with these 4 servers, you'll have 8 logical cores, and 32 GB RAM.

I suppose it would be hard to find/build a single new server with those stats for that price.

Are you going to use this for anything other than a VCP5 lab? If you're only planning to use it for a VCP5 lab, why 4? Wouldn't 2 be enough?

jibbajabba

Everyone.

I tried nested setups and they seem to need a lot more attention .. Especially vDS' seem to be flakey when you play with multiple uplinks etc.

I also had some random raid card failure (Adaptec 5805) on that particular host and ended up with data corruption and as a result the whole lot was poof ... I think I just prefer proper hosts - a lot more straight forward .. I also didn't have much luck with PXE Boots on virtualized hosts ...

For now it is only a lab, but I always love to play with new technologies, test all sorts of stuff and so on .. once i am done with VMware I might give Hyper-V another try etc.... Hell, even if I use every single one of them to rip movies to my iPad

Having low power server / PCs available which don't hurt your electricity bill when running 24/7 - is a big plus and I could probably give you 100 uses for that setup ...

Oh and why 4 ? Because I want to dedicate one as vCenter (rather than running as VM), two hosts in a HA / DR cluster and one host to play with ... booting from SAN and so on ...

I only thought about 4 because they are so cheap .. If I'd use proper rackmount server I'd use two max ... but the 8GB RAM limit (and rubbish CPU) asks for more oompf :P

QHalo

Why the physical vCenter if I may ask? Just curious. I figured with 4 you were playing with SRM.

jibbajabba

QHalo wrote: »

Why the physical vCenter if I may ask? Just curious. I figured with 4 you were playing with SRM.

No real reason .. I just prefer it that way ... I intend to break hosts so having the vcenter running on the cluster I am breaking doesn't work well...

Plus, I do need a Windows host anyway which runs other management scripts so I might as well use it as ISCSI storage and run vCenter...

And I will be playing with SRM too at some point .. 4 hosts is just a sweet number and all for under a grand (in £ anyway).

Everyone

I guess I have a mental block where I can't allow myself to have something that is ONLY for lab purposes. I have to put it to practical use somehow. I have 4 old 2U servers, picked them all up for $300 total, only to find out they were limited to a max of 4 GB each. They aren't too power hungry, but they are loud. I took parts from 2 to max out the other 2, so I'm only using 2 of them. I recently rebuilt them with Hyper-V Server 8 Beta (they had ESXi 4.1 on them before). I can squeeze a couple VMs on them, but not as many as I'd like to. The 2U cases are pretty nice, they take ATX boards. Trying to find a decent motherboard with quad gigabit ethernet that will take a boat load of RAM for a reasonable price.

jibbajabba

Oh I am sure I will find another purpose. VCAP-DCA is just one, then there's Hyper-V, KVM and all that other cloud nonsense

I'd love to even have a dedicated server for AD, Exchange, Linux and Solaris, stopping me to use dual boot. I cannot have enough server to be honest

I used to work in hosting and had all the resources I want. Now having to depend on my own wallet is a whole different ball game.

I think my Exchange server (one domain, two mailboxes) consisted of 12 or so server lol (2 AD, 2 Edge, 2 CAS LBed using two Zeus LB appliances), 2 MB, 2 HT and all that spread across two datacenter.

Overkill? Of course. Why? Because I could. Now having to pay for each bit myself I am trying to keep my server greekyness drugs flowing for the smallest possible price (up front and running cost).