VMware Home Lab Advice Needed - HP ProLiant DL360 G6 Server

Saleen174

My goal is to setup a home lab to learn more about VMware. I do not have much experience in virtualization. I have been reading many of the threads on this site regarding VMware home labs; from all that I have read, I am leaning towards a HP ProLiant server.

I am considering buying a HP ProLiant DL360 G6 server on eBay. I checked this model on the VMware HCL list and it appears good to go - up to and including ESXi 5.5. I can not afford to make a mistake and buy the wrong server for my home lab; therefore, I wanted to check and make sure I'm making a wise purchase and not missing anything.

Any advice / comments would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.


The following is from the current eBay listing:

HP ProLiant DL360 G6 Server, 2x 2.26GHz Quad-Core, 72GB, 2x 146GB SAS, 2x Power, DVD, Rails
Server is used and tested in excellent working condition. Pulled from production environment for hardware refresh.

HP ProLiant DL360 G6 Server with following:

(1) HP ProLiant DL360 G6 Rack CTO Chassis
(2) Intel® Xeon® Processor L5520 (2.26 GHz, 8MB L3 Cache, 60 Watts, DDR3-1066, HT Turbo 1/1/2/2)
(1) PC3-10600R 4GB 2RX4 DIMMS – 72 GB total
(1) HP Smart Array P410i/256MB Controller
(2) HP 460W HE Hot Plug AC Power Supply Kit
(1) DVD-ROM
(2) HP 146GB 3G SAS 10K SFF SP HDD
(1) Rail Kit

Price: $796 or make an offer - free shipping

cyberguypr

Welcome aboard. Any particular reason why you are looking at a server and not a beefed up workstation?

kriscamaro68

Here is the route I would go:

Buy this server: Dell PowerEdge C1100 1U 2X Xeon QC L5520 2 26GHz No HDD 72GB DDR3 Tested | eBay

and buy 2 of these: Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

You will got a lot more speed out of this setup on the HDD and save a couple bucks.

QHalo

Take a look at this thread. Tons of info of people building much more power and noise friendly systems for labbing.

Your home ESX server lab hardware specs? - [H]ard|Forum

dave330i

cyberguypr wrote: »

Welcome aboard. Any particular reason why you are looking at a server and not a beefed up workstation?

What he said. I've been able to do all my labbing on an i7 with 16 GB RAM and couple of SSDs.

Saleen174

Thanks for the quick replies. I like the lab Essendon has setup - a HP DL 380 G5 with 32GB RAM with nested ESXi's (with ESXi running on the physical machine too). I really have no particular reason for choosing a server over a workstation.

eansdad

kriscamaro68 wrote: »

Here is the route I would go:

Buy this server: Dell PowerEdge C1100 1U 2X Xeon QC L5520 2 26GHz No HDD 72GB DDR3 Tested | eBay

and buy 2 of these: Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

You will got a lot more speed out of this setup on the HDD and save a couple bucks.

Did I read that wrong? It is $477 and has 72GB ram!

pramin

Memory (RAM) Capacity:
[h=2]72 GB[/h]

kriscamaro68

eansdad wrote: »

Did I read that wrong? It is $477 and has 72GB ram!

You may have cause its $427.99 with free shipping and 72gb of ram.

phonic

Here's my vSphere lab:

tprice5

I followed this guys build ...
ESXi 5.0 AMD Whitebox Server for $500 with Passthrough (IOMMU) | Home Server Blog

While you likely won't be able to build it for $500, you get the rack mounted chasis with consumer components which is essentially the best of both worlds; low power consumption, noise and consolidated space.

I ordered mine on the 18th and Amazon says it'll be on this side of the world on November 2nd. Cannot wait!

jdancer

Another option is to install VMWare Workstation and install EXSi in it. That's what I am doing.

paul78

Saleen174 wrote: »

I really have no particular reason for choosing a server over a workstation.

The only thing you may need to watch out for is that with 5.5, VMWare had deprecated a lot of the drivers for non-server class components. While VMWare didn't formally support all the drivers that work, the ISOs used to package them. So if you use a beef-up workstation with components that are not in the 5.5 distribution, it may be a bit more complicated to deploy. For example, Realtek NIC drivers are no longer included.

The list of deprecated drivers can be found here:
VMware KB: Devices deprecated and unsupported in ESXi 5.5

On the plus side - I understand that the 32Gb limit was removed from ESXi 5.5.

Saleen174

Thanks for all the replies.

I decided to build a workstation; I ordered all the components yesterday and they are scheduled to arrive on Monday. Time to build a computer!

brownwrap

I purchased the Dell Poweredge C1100, and although I had high hopes for it, I am quite dissatisfied with it at this point. Loud, wouldn't load Red Hat Enterprise Linux, nor ROCKS (which is based on CentOS). Did load Debian, but shortly after that it would no longer see the SSD. Maybe I had a bad drive, it was brand new, out of the box. On the plus side, the item was shipped from San Jose, so I could drive it back I guess.