AMD FX for esxi? good move?

zeegy

zeegy

zeegy

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Hi all,

Im wanting to build an ESXi server, and from what i have read it seems that the core requirement is ram, lots and lots of Ram.

I have seen that people are running esx on their hp microservers which have pretty underpowered CPU's

I have a case, some hdds and a psu lying around. so ive bene looking for bundles (cpu, mobo and ram) to complete the package and deploy an ESXi server.

I have found a AMD Bulldozer FX-4100 4 Core and 16Gb of Ram for as little as £150. would this be good enough to run ESXi on? or are there any better reccomendations?
 
16gb should be OK for general use, I'm using 8gb and it's fine for 3 VMs. Ideally I'd prefer 16/32 though.
 
Nope. I wouldn't even consider it personally. The Intel i3 would be a far better choice IMO. much lower power usage and it seems to out-perform the FX-4100 from what I've read.

For a server use though you'd be better off getting a Xeon IMO, but if you can't afford then look at an i3. (In my opinion).
 
Rubbish.
The i3 wouldn't come near the FX frankly for his uses.
Its not all about clock speed, for basic VM testing, the ability to have 4 proper cores compared to 2 will allow him to test things like affinity a lot better.
 
Bulldozer is really designed for just this kind of usage, But if you can it may be worth looking at spending a bit more to get a fx6 or 8. The 8120 on ocuk can currently be had for £110 after cashback and the 6100 comes in at £85 after cashback.
 
Jayster said:
Bulldozer is really designed for just this kind of usage, But if you can it may be worth looking at spending a bit more to get a fx6 or 8. The 8120 on ocuk can currently be had for £110 after cashback and the 6100 comes in at £85 after cashback.
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The 8 cores yeah, but the 4 cores? Better off with older CPU's from either camp be that Deneb or even Lynfield.

I agree with the FX8, at a shade over 100 they're a mighty contender when the cores can be used.
 
that has crossed my mind. ive read the reviews on the bulldozer and people said, well not much point, get an i5. but for numerous vms, this is probably more where the AMD Can excel. thanks for the input though, may be able to stetch to a hex core.
 
Thing is, unless you get the FX8, the rest of the line up is pointless given you can get a better performing Phenom II X6 for pretty cheap.
 
Running an x4 840 here with 16gb ram running 6 hungry vm's without issue.
If you can down the line, get a decent raid card and get hardware raid.
Perc 5's can be had for cheap now just remember to replace the crap passive cooler for a decent active one.
 
What are you planning on running? (sorry If i've missed it :p )

I'm not being funny here... but i've ran exsi with 4GB ram and an old intel processor on an old Dell that work didn't use anymore, and ran Windows and OpenBSD machines no bother... so 16GB? yeah, you'll be more than fine, and the processor will do the job!
 
Unless you have some seriously CPU intensive programs running, memory is always more heavily used.

We have a 6 node ESX cluster, each node with 64Gb and 2x E5540 (quad core), running at around 50-60% Memory and 15-20% CPU Utilization.
A big mix of servers and usage with about 10-20 VM's running per ESX host.

I know this is way over what anyone would reasonably run at home, but it gives you an idea of where usage can scale up to.
 
I'd be quite interested in seeing the actual active guest memories used by lots of these VMs. I think a lot of you will be shocked at just how efficient ESX is with memory. Active guest memory is more important factor on a single host where N+1 etc... style resiliency isn't of concern.
 
GaryH-21 said:
What are you planning on running? (sorry If i've missed it :p )

I'm not being funny here... but i've ran exsi with 4GB ram and an old intel processor on an old Dell that work didn't use anymore, and ran Windows and OpenBSD machines no bother... so 16GB? yeah, you'll be more than fine, and the processor will do the job!
Click to expand...

didnt disclose it,

minimum of a windows 7 client, a windows xp client, a win2k8r2 server running MsSQL and an ubuntu server running MySQL - ideally, all at the same time.
 
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