Home ESXI Server

Hi all,

Just wanting your opinions on the below. Have had a home server for a few years now, and have just upgraded it over time with components from my PC when I change them. But now being at uni and being away from home, and due to issues I've had with old/consumer grade products I'm looking to build a proper ESXI server with server grade stuff. So far been looking at getting the below.

Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2630L v4
Supermicro ATX DDR4 LGA 2011 X10SRH-CLN4F-O (with LSI 3008)
2x Samsung 32GB DDR4-2133 ECC Registered Server Memory CL15 1.2V
Noctua NH-U9DX i4 Xeon CPU Cooler

Will use the power supply I already have in there - not 100% sure what it is but it is decent.

Also will be getting

8x 4TB Harddrives attached to the LSI 2008 on the board and passed through to my Media VM - not sure which drives to get? or what level of RAID to run on them, this array will be used to store all media, not sure what to use between RAID 6 or 10, any ideas on drives and/or best RAID Level?

How does this look?

Cheers

If you're going to spend that sort of money, why don't you get this? It is the PERFECT ESXi home lab machine: high core count, supports 128GB RAM.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/midtower/5028/SYS-5028D-TN4T.cfm

rotor said:

If you're going to spend that sort of money, why don't you get this? It is the PERFECT ESXi home lab machine: high core count, supports 128GB RAM.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/midtower/5028/SYS-5028D-TN4T.cfm

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What's the advantage of that being roughly the same price? Slightly lower TDP, and smaller form factor, other than that can't see many advantages?

I probably should have mentioned (apologies) that I already have a 4U 16 3.5" HDD case to put it in...

My stock answer to homebrew ESXi builds applies here:

Check the compatibility matrix for the NIC and RAID card. I think Supermicro kit should be fine, but I'd check nonetheless.

If you're throwing that much money at it, i'd strongly suggest getting a dedicated RAID controller. RAID options will depend on what the controller can do. For a large qty of disks, RAID 10 tends to be the more chosen option.

Are you running a hosting business or something? Unless you're running a lot of VM's this might be a bit overkill for the generic home-user who posts asking for advice on an ESX set up.

Semple said:

If you're throwing that much money at it, i'd strongly suggest getting a dedicated RAID controller. RAID options will depend on what the controller can do. For a large qty of disks, RAID 10 tends to be the more chosen option.

Are you running a hosting business or something? Unless you're running a lot of VM's this might be a bit overkill for the generic home-user who posts asking for advice on an ESX set up.

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The board I've listed has a dedicated LSI2008 controller built into it, which I'll be hanging the 4TB drives off of, I also have a perc H700 that I'll be using for some other drives.

Agreed it is potential overkill for home, but I am looking to setup my own business in the next couple of years and would want to use this for that in the future. I will be running a number of relatively power needy vms for AutoCAD/sound arena modelling software.

Will check the HCL thanks

I'm sure it won't change your mind but I'm currently in the process of removing my home lab and instead I've rented a cheap dedicated box in the states for £20 a month. It's not exactly a power beast 8cores and only 8GB of RAM and a 500GB disk but it's perfect for my needs (all the configurations down to ESXi will be regularly dumped off site).

ecksmen said:

I'm sure it won't change your mind but I'm currently in the process of removing my home lab and instead I've rented a cheap dedicated box in the states for £20 a month. It's not exactly a power beast 8cores and only 8GB of RAM and a 500GB disk but it's perfect for my needs (all the configurations down to ESXi will be regularly dumped off site).

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ESXi with 8GB of RAM? Doesn't give you a lot of flexibility... £240 a year isn't trivial. What was your reason for dismantling the home lab?

ecksmen said:

I'm sure it won't change your mind but I'm currently in the process of removing my home lab and instead I've rented a cheap dedicated box in the states for £20 a month. It's not exactly a power beast 8cores and only 8GB of RAM and a 500GB disk but it's perfect for my needs (all the configurations down to ESXi will be regularly dumped off site).

Click to expand...

I had looked at getting something offsite, but just can't move away from having the hardware at home, thats half of the enjoyment for me haha

rotor said:

ESXi with 8GB of RAM? Doesn't give you a lot of flexibility... £240 a year isn't trivial. What was your reason for dismantling the home lab?

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My lab server also doubled as my plex server, this is really what I've migrated out. The heat and noise my server created 24/7 for plex just got too much for me to tolerate. I can still turn it on if I need another 8CPU / 64GB / SSD but I'll prob just make do with the host and vmware workstation on my main PC (i5 and 16GB). I was really just suggesting an alternative - it's not for everyone.

I back up the VMs to the cloud and to my NAS so the data is encrypted and in 3 locations...

Cheers for all the above replies. I'm really stuck on RAID ideas, I have a couple of ideas:

1. Use the built in LSI3008 in RAID 10 with 4TB drives (Giving 16TB Useable) - Faster, more expensive
2. Use the built in LSI3008 in RAID 6 with 3TB drives (Giving 18TB Useable) - Slower, cheaper

Would rather use RAID 10, obviously as a RAID 6 rebuild time on that would be horrible.

There other idea I had was just to have a VM with FreeNas on and using SW ZFS?

What would you guys recommend?

Apologies, probably not enough information, not sure what else to say!