It's been a fair while since I have posted anything on here since I have built my home server with WHS11. In the end I did actually have to settle with a Z68 motherboard (Asus P8Z68-V LX) as there were shipping problems with the S1200KP board and would take 2 months to ship, so out of frustration I went with the original board that I set out to buy.
I have been toying around with WHS11 and it didn't exactly blow me away but to be fair, it did what it said it would do so I can't really complain in that respect. I did run into a problem when first installing at first, turns out that WHS11 is not actually compatible with my motherboard which means I can't install any form of drivers except LAN drivers for some bizzare reason. I was also looking forward to raiding drives for my file storage purposes. Fortunately though, where hard drive prices have been so high I have not been able to buy more to even be able to use the raid function, but it is still another frustration nonetheless. I also found that WHS11 either kept changing my router settings when it shouldn't or it was requiring certain ports to be enabled, which I would change on the router, and it would insist that the router still wasn't configured properly and just became an annoyance.
So battering around the problems I have and have been getting, I have also now progressed into application and web development I need to come up with some solution that will allow me to work on development at home and I've been pondering around the idea of using ESXi as building a new server or machine every time I need do do a different aspect of work is too costly and just somewhat silly.
I have not touched virtualization before and in my brief reading of it the most I understand is lots of ram = good because VM's are RAM hungry and VM'S run best on SSD's, from what I have read at least.
Would it be an idea to grab a small HDD to put ESXi onto, have 120GB SSD (or raid 2 60GB's as I have one that isn't being used) and whack in 16GB of RAM. Any comments and suggestions is appreciated.
Regards,
Dreamgforger
Shame you were unable to get the S1200KP over there. I get them from the local distributor here but they are generally on a 'special order' bases and so there is a bit of a delay on them coming.
I also had some issues with the router config but then my router is not uPnP compatible. I manually open the ports and use DynDNS to forward from my ISPs dynamic IP addresses. I tend not to use the 'wizards' but just configure the server as if it was a Win2008r2 machine for shares etc which is fine as it is Win2008r2 (cut down) under the skin. It even has a number of roles available which you can configure for DNS, DHCP, Terminal Server and even WSUS. The last one I like best as
WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) allows the server to download windows patches and with a little hack, your desktop machines can be make to query your WHS-2011 server for its updates. One download from Microsoft and then the other updates are over your local network for all your machines.
For the driver issues, Win7 drives work a lot of the time. I am running mine on a Intel DH67CF mITX board and Intel refuse to make Win2008r2 drivers for any of their 'desktop line'. The Intel storage manager for Win7 installed and runs fine for me. Same with the USB3/Chipset/lan drivers.
Ok, as for ESXi.
Install ESXi on your WHS-2011 machine. Install WHS-2011 as a VM on the machine, install other VMs as and when you need them. I had been doing this for a year or so.
The two biggest gotchas for ESXi tend to be storage controllers and network chipsets. Be prepared to add an Intel CT desktop network card as many network chipsets (including newer Intel models) are not natively supported by ESXi. There are guides around on how to patch newer drivers into ESXi so you may want to give that a try.
The same is true of storage controllers and many people add a cheap SAS controllers (take a look at the auction sites);
* IBM M1015 - needs Bios flash - Lots of info on how to do it on the internet. Need to find a motherboard that will let you do it. I found my LGA1155 boards cannot but my LGA775 boards can. These are basically LSI-9240s without the Raid 5 (a 'feature key' can give back the raid 5).
* Most LSI-2008 based cards work fine.
* LSI-1068e based cards are supported but be aware they only tend to work in PCIe 1.0a slots or PCIe 2.0 x4 slots. Any higher x?? PCIe 2.0 slots and you are likely the card will not be recognised
* HP Controllers also generally work (ie the HP P411/P800).
The ESXi HCL (Hardware compatibility list) can be found
here. Not being on the list does not mean it will not work, only that it has not been certified to work. Having said that, a number of items I have tried not on the HCL have not worked
. If it is not on the HCL but does work, then there is no guarantee that any ESXi changes will not knock it out. Not so bad for a home user but obviously not acceptable for a business.
ESXi can be installed to a memory stick/ USB thumb drive. Mine runs from a 8GB thumb drive. All my VMs run from hard drives apart from my Minecraft server which uses a SSD. Unless you need masses of IOPS, a decent hard drive should be fine (WD Black / Seagate Barracuda etc).
If you have an i5 (non-'K series') processor then with the Z68 board you have you can use VT-d. This allows you to pass controller chipsets (and their connected devices) directly to selected VMs for their native control. This means adding a cheap SAS controller and putting your WHS-2011 drives on it will allow you to pass those drives directly to your WHS-2011 VM. You do not have to convert the drives to ESXi datastores and reformat them, you can also pull the controller and drives and plug them in to any other WHS 2011 / Win7 machines and still read the data.
ESXi 5 was limited to 8GB on release but after a massive community outcry, VMWare upped this to 32GB. More ram is better but be aware, my WHS-2011 only uses around 2.5GB and that is mainly at bootup. My Linux servers use a few hundred MB. 8GB (2x4GB) will be fine for most people and if you are pushing the limits you can pop in a bit more or wait for the 8GB ram sticks to come down in price a bit.
Right I think that is enough to be getting on with
. Give it a go and ask away if you have any questions.
RB
