HP Micro server for ESXi

Hey everyone,

For a good 2 or 3 years I've been looking for a good quiet, power sipping computer to turn tin a vmware ESXi box. I think I found it.

Newegg.com - HP ProLiant N40L Ultra Micro Tower Server System AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz 2-Core 2GB (1 x 2GB) 1 x 250GB LFF SATA 658553-001

Have anyone used this for themselves or are there any good alternatives, i'm nervous about hte fact it has an atom based process but the box seems to get a lot of love for /r/homelab (sorry not trying to spam) The box can officially go up to 8gb but unofficially go to 16gb using no ECC Anyone want to ofter any suggestions for something better I want to spend at most 500 bucks. I know a Q6600 would be plenty for CPU its just more memory the btter you can throw at the box is key.

Thanks everyone!

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Comments

pumbaa_g

Sounds good if you want a second box but not sure if meets all the requirements if its the only box you want to deploy. Pretty sure the processor & 8 GB RAM will be a bit anemic once you start loading stuff on it. For $500 the only other option will be the Bulldozer Desktop but Power/Stability this can't be matched.

jibbajabba

I got 5 right now in my ESXi lab (1xN36L, 4GB Ram, running CentOS to present NFS and iSCSI shares, 1xN40L, 8GB Ram, running 2008R2,AD,vCenter, 3xN40L, 16GB Ram, ESXi) and I love it.

In my opinnion CPU doesnt matter - only bottleneck is Ram and GPU so it depends what you are using it for.

pumbaa_g

True! Hopefully I can prove the same with my new 8 Core AMD Whitebox with 32 GB RAM. BTW Unless you are going for VDI and thin clients why GPU? As long as it supports the Windows Experience

jibbajabba

I mean the Microserver in general - sometimes people think this is a cheap PC, but it really isn't

So if you need a lot of GPU or CPU oompf, then you are better off buying a "normal" PC ... but for ESXi and as a Lab - perfect ...

pumbaa_g

I am putting it together for VCP and then MCSA 2012 and beyond....

sratakhin

Wouldn't this be a better option?
Newegg.com - HP ProLiant ML150 G6 Tower Server System Intel Xeon E5504 2.00GHz 4C/4T 2GB 1 x 250GB 3.5" SATA 7.2K HDD 518174-005

pumbaa_g

Yup, that would be wonderful and I could go up to around $1200 as well for something in this category however, where I live these are not available and cost double (India)

tpatt100

I looked at the HP Microserver but am going with an AMD build in case I want to use the box for something else later.