VMWare server purchase

So I was cruising Craigs list and happened upon a an HP ProLiant DL380 G3 for $150.
Came equipped with dual xeon (single core) 2.86ghz 3gb of ram and 4 36.4gb 10k scsi drives, plus dual gige nics.

I purchased said box for said price! I got it today.

I've put ESXi 3.5 on the box (32bit only) and it seems to run really well, I'm notcing the lack of space though that kind of bums me out but I'm excited to teach myself ESX. I bought the darn thing for doing labs and stuff does anyone know of any good sites that would have good scenarios for the 70-290 exam?

Also do you think I should of picked up a better server for VMWare or was it a good deal?

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dynamik

I use two HP DL360 G3s for my ESX work, so I think you're good

If you want more space, why not load up OpenFiler on another PC and use it for iSCSI.

What 290 resources do you have? The MS Press book exercises were good for this one.

wweboy

dynamik wrote: »

I use two HP DL360 G3s for my ESX work, so I think you're good

If you want more space, why not load up OpenFiler on another PC and use it for iSCSI.

What 290 resources do you have? The MS Press book exercises were good for this one.

aww man my NAS doubles as my HTPC so I can't I have so much space I could put to good use darn it lol.... Unless Can I use an external usb hard drive on a vmware open filer hmm..

When I can I visit your house Dynamik? it sounds like you have a data center in there :P

Thanks for the response.

dynamik

I'd say pretty much any time if I wasn't basically homeless at the moment...

I actually ran OpenFiler inside of VirtualBox on my HTPC when I was doing that.

wweboy

Nice I'll do that then

thanks.

tiersten

That server will be fine for ESX.

If you actually want to do studying for your VCP however, you'll want at least 1 more similar system to use as part of your ESX cluster. You'll need shared storage however so add in something that can do NFS and iSCSI. You'll still need to do the mandatory VCP course though...

JDMurray

I have ESXi 3.5.0 running on two HP ProLiant rack-mount servers just fine. They are good, quiet, compact boxes.

wweboy

JDMurray wrote: »

I have ESXi 3.5.0 running on two HP ProLiant rack-mount servers just fine. They are good, quiet, compact boxes.

QUIET!?!?! are you deaf lol mine runs full blast 24 / 7 and for the life of me can't find jack to make it quiet lol.

Thanks for the tips I'm gonna look into te VCP wasn't planning on studying for it but ESXi seems pretty straight forward and stuff and virtual anything is hot right now and I can see all the benefits of moving a company towards virtual servers .

JDMurray

wweboy wrote: »

QUIET!?!?! are you deaf lol mine runs full blast 24 / 7 and for the life of me can't find jack to make it quiet lol.

Hmmm...have you opened it up and checked if it's full of dust?

Also, if you're running it in a very quiet room then it's quite noisy. I consider mine "quiet" as compared to the noise the other junk server I have put out.

kalebksp

wweboy wrote: »

Thanks for the tips I'm gonna look into te VCP wasn't planning on studying for it but ESXi seems pretty straight forward and stuff and virtual anything is hot right now and I can see all the benefits of moving a company towards virtual servers .

You have to take VMware's $3000 training to get certified. Most people only go for the VCP if their employer is paying for the training.

tiersten

wweboy wrote: »

QUIET!?!?! are you deaf lol mine runs full blast 24 / 7 and for the life of me can't find jack to make it quiet lol.

They tend to be at 100% until the OS is fully loaded.

dynamik

Mine sound like Jet Engines as well.

msteinhilber

dynamik wrote: »

Mine sound like Jet Engines as well.

Same here - came across a rack with 12 DL380 G3's and all of them are incredibly loud overall, not that much quieter than the initial level at post. We have DL380 G5's at the office and they are a heck of a lot quieter, I have some 1U's at the office that are even quieter than these.

JDMurray

msteinhilber wrote: »

We have DL380 G5's at the office and they are a heck of a lot quieter, I have some 1U's at the office that are even quieter than these.

I have G5's as well; I didn't know the G3's were so noisy. I still suspect they probably just need a good cleaning with an air compressor.