ESX Server @ Home

stueng · 15 Jan 2013 at 08:12

Hi, Im looking to build a rack mountable ESX server at home. Because its at home there are power and noise considerations.

Rack mountable case

Dual CPU compatible, but starting with one CPU (is there such a thing as dual I7? or does it have to be Xeon? What about opteron?) Would be ideal if the onboard NIC is ESX compatible?

Able to take PCI/PCI-E ESX compatible NIC

Would like to start with one stick of RAM but with upgradeability in mind, so one large stick

No HDD necessary will connect to QNAP NAS over iSCSI or NFS

Budget - £800

Any ideas? thanks in advance!

stueng · 15 Jan 2013 at 13:28

the focus is more on learning vmware than it is on running the VM's so it doesn't need to be extremely powerfull, but it needs to be functional

stueng · 15 Jan 2013 at 13:41

I didnt think i5 has hyperthreading?

stueng · 15 Jan 2013 at 14:25

well its for a friend not me.. he is moving his gaming machine into a 2U rack mounted chassis and building up a rackmount NAS and also wants a rack mount PC to run vmware on.. he has a 22U rack in his office

stueng · 15 Jan 2013 at 14:46

iaind said:
Utterly pointless at home - you're just adding the noise and power of rack kit for no real reason

ou're preaching to the converted but that's what he wants :s

stueng · 15 Jan 2013 at 14:55

hes learning vmware for business use really.. hes going to be deploying a massive vmware project soon so he wants exposure to running it on a proper server with multiple NICs, VLANS etc