Cheap ESXi solution/build?

StevenRaith

StevenRaith

StevenRaith

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30 Apr 2009
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688
Ey up,

Anyone know of a good source of info on whitebox ESX building?

My current ESXi server is a Dell GX620[Core achitecture Pentium D] with 4gb of RAM talking to various random NAS solutions. I want to change that for something meatier, preferably quad core.

However, my budget extends to about forty-three pence, a stick of chewing gum and a large brass washer I found in my rivals comms room [we have a few IT depts at work...] so going to the likes of Dell/HP is frowned up, especially as my people know I am a hardware nut and expect me to come up with leftfield solutions to this sot of thing. My leftfield solution of 'gimme more money' was rejected however. My budget is 'effectively' zero for hardware, basically, and they want me to recycle hardware but exceptions can be made, and in this case, it should be IMHO.

So I am looking for something quad core, with support for 8Gb of RAM, and ideally onboard Gb NIC, and of course, ESXi. I'm wary of just speccing up a 'semi-gamer' spec system as I can't find a non-Xeon/Opteron/server platform HCL - that is, bog standard components - although apparently the P5Q works well enough if the SATA controller is in AHCI mode.

Suggestions appreciated.
 
I'd probably look into a HP ML115 (~£200).

Spec'd up with 2TB of storage and 8GB of ram it shouldn't cost anymore than £500.
 
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Got linkies?

FWIW if work say no [entirely possible, the teases] I might just get it for home and run a few web hosts and openfiler over eSATA, any idea if the ML110 supports that? Got datasheet?
 
Cheers.

I noticed it is marked as a 4U mATX system - does that mean that I could theoretically rip out the mobo and install it in a microATX chassis [ie a smaller one] with a 500w PSU, you think...?
 
ethos said:
I'd probably look into a HP ML115 (~£200).

Spec'd up with 2TB of storage and 8GB of ram it shouldn't cost anymore than £500.
Click to expand...

Having just bought one I can tell you it came to £391 inc VAT and delivery for an ML115 with 2TB of disk and 6GB of RAM. Just ditch the single stick of 1GB ECC RAM it comes with and use cheaper non ECC RAM if budget is an issue.

You probably know already but format the 1TB disks with the largest block size offered by ESXi otherwise you'll be sat there like I was wondering why you can't create a virtual hard disk bigger than 256GB
 
Disk I/O is a massive issue with virtualization, and is more often than not the performance bottleneck in real applications. Make sure you have enough disks. :)
 
daz said:
Disk I/O is a massive issue with virtualization, and is more often than not the performance bottleneck in real applications. Make sure you have enough disks. :)
Click to expand...

Agreed. I/O on 7.2k's IMO are pretty poor.

On average you looking at 80/90 IOPS per 7.2K disc. A 15K would be in the area of 180 IOPS.

However, it depends on what appications you intend to run on the box.

Andy
 
rixarena said:
is it just for testing nas boxes? you could short stroke the drives to improve IOPS for ESX boxes raid 10 is better than raid 5

Regards Sam
Click to expand...

Just to clarify, disk on the ESX machine is NOT an issue - at work I have a couple of NASs with iSCSI/NFS I can use, and at home, I am planning to build a small, light mATX/ITX system with an eSATA attached RAID array [a DAS box with four or five disks in it, so I can isolate it a bit - full ATX chassis with five disks = noisy unless you spend a lot of money IME - seperate, shoeboxed size DAS array should be easier to muffle], running OpenFiler to serve up monster storage over CIFS/FTP for my collection of adult films, er, I mean, music, and iSCSI for running the VMs - the ESX box would literally be running of either an 80gb disk or a pen drive.

Hence my interest in ripping the ML115 apart and slapping it in a small, quieter chassis.
 
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