Hardware... oh boy

So I find myself suddenly expected to learn ESX for work. I've read through this section of the forums, signed up for the Stanly CC class and ordered the mastering VMWare book by Scott Lowe from recommendations in various threads.

Now we get to the hardware. I have 3 unused sun servers at work with ESX installed on them that I play around with (I have CSR1000v installed on them for my cisco studies), but I'm looking to build something for home use as well, as when my wife heard about the Stanly class she wanted signed up too!

jibbajabba's recommendation in this thread lead me to eBay where I see someone selling a veritable crapton of 5500s. 18G ram seems like a good starting point, and the 80G drive can easily be replaced with spares I have lying around if need be. CPU looks good (I think - I haven't built a box in a long while, so some of the terms I'm guessing on). I dunno if the NIC would be compatible though or if I'd have to pick up something; I know VMWare is pretty picky about its hardware.

Does anyone knowledgeable on the subject have any recommendations on if that's worth getting and any extras worth picking up?

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tprice5

bermovick wrote: »

Does anyone knowledgeable on the subject have any recommendations on if that's worth getting and any extras worth picking up?

I always point people to The Homer Server Blog.

As far as extras go, I would just make sure you've got a few extra NICs to segment your traffic. At least one for VM traffic and one for management. If you've got a few spare drives laying around you might want a cheap HBA.

To have all the features available you are going to want multiple hosts (at least 2) and shared storage. So I would look into splitting your resources across multiple servers as opposed to beefing up one big server.

ninjaturtle

I run these for my VMware lab. Looks like the price went up a little, I picked up my servers for $459.00 each.

Dell PowerEdge C1100 CS24 Ty 1U 2X Xeon QC L5520 2 26GHz 4XTRAYS 72GB DDR3 | eBay

bermovick

I just realized I hadn't linked to the auction I was referring to in my OP. Here it is:

Dell Precision T5500 2X 2 13GHz QC E5506 18GB RAM 80GB HDD No OS | eBay

The box ninjaturtle posted is pretty nice (72G ram!) but is a bit more than I want to pay for a box. I found a cheaper one here

Dell PowerEdge C1100 1U 2X Xeon 2 26GHz Quad Core CPU's 24GB Mem 4X Trays | eBay

But one issue with a rackmount is the lack of ... a rack! All my cisco stuff is in the equivalent of a lackrack. I don't know the depth of the server or if there would be issues since the cart isn't that deep.

iBrokeIT

18GB of RAM isn't nearly enough to run a nested setup so you can setup a multiple host lab to run HA. 32GB should be the minimum you are looking for in a lab server.

ninjaturtle

I would definitely think ahead on the RAM mate, you'll always want extra especially when your in the lab. You'll end up spending a lot more money upgrading the RAM. I had that happen to my Dell T110 II server. To max out the RAM it costs a fortune!!

The server is indeed long. I have mine racked in a Skeletek 24U rack, but I had to create my own custom supports in the back to support the server, along with an added shelf from Dantrak.

tprice5

iBrokeIT wrote: »

18GB of RAM isn't nearly enough to run a nested setup so you can setup a multiple host lab to run HA. 32GB should be the minimum you are looking for in a lab server.

I think 2 or 3 of the 24gb would work out nicely.

dave330i

People really should take more advantage of this:

VMware - NEE

bermovick

I don't have $600+ to spend on a single big box though. I'm really needing enough for labbing along with the VCP class/book really. Something upgradable though if need be - that's what I'd liked about that T5500. It looked like it could be upgraded quite a bit but would (hopefully) be sufficient for the studies with its 18G.

The sun boxes I run esx on at work only have 16G and I've managed to get 8 or 9 CSR routers running on them, so I'm not sure why 18G wouldn't be enough?

Deathmage

ninjaturtle wrote: »

I would definitely think ahead on the RAM mate, you'll always want extra especially when your in the lab. You'll end up spending a lot more money upgrading the RAM. I had that happen to my Dell T110 II server. To max out the RAM it costs a fortune!!

The server is indeed long. I have mine racked in a Skeletek 24U rack, but I had to create my own custom supports in the back to support the server, along with an added shelf from Dantrak.

You did know they make extension for the Skeletec 24U for long servers? - I got it for the setup I have since the Dell R610's are long too!

jleydon82

I have to say, I looked into servers for my testing purposes in the past and never bothered buying one for all labs I have been working on. I ended up just taking my machine desktop which was pretty decent with a Core i7 and just added more memory. It has been great when creating nested VMs. The only additional expense I incurred was ordering 32gb of memory so I could properly allocate it out. Keep in mind you can get by with minimal specs for VMs you create since you are just using it for testing and shouldn't have any users accessing it.

With Windows 7, Core i7 4770k, 32gb, and a local SSD disk for the local storage, I did quite well at getting this up and running. Granted there are costs associated with the processor but if you have a decent desktop that can prove quite useful for Nested ESXi.