ESXi Home Build

[NachT]

Hi all,

Just after a bit of advice/suggestions really. I'm soon going to be setting up a new ESXi build for the home, and after looking around a bit, decided to go with the following gear:

- Intel Core i7-7820X Socket 2066
- Asus TUF X299 Mark2 (Socket 2066) Intel X299 ATX Motherboard
- G.Skill Trident Z RGB 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C14 3200MHz Quad Channel Kit
- Samsung 960 EVO Polaris 500GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive

My concern is compatibility.

What's the likely hood in the following, if anyone has experience with this type of hardware?

- Would the above motherboard and CPU function alright?
- What's the chances in the on-board LAN functioning correctly?
- What's the chances in the on-board M.2 drive being detectable/usable?


Cheers guys

 

[NachT]

Hey Sparky,

So the server has two purposes, it will be hosting a lot of stuff used on my Home LAN (i.e. SQL Server, software based firewall and router, DNS filtering, NAS features like shared network storage, Security Camera hosting, a couple of hosted game servers)

And it will also have a secondary purpose for a home lab running on a separate VLAN. The home lab side will be quite intensive, along with all of my normal 24/7 running stuff above.

All of the above is the reason why I chose the CPU I have. I was looking at the Xeon chips, and although they run cooler/more efficient, support ECC and more RAM - I opted to go for the higher clock rate instead, and I'd still be able to reach 128GB RAM, which is plenty for what I'll be doing.

Yeah, the motherboard choice was kinda rushed. I just wanted something that could cope with the RAM amount, CPU and offered M.2. Open to suggestions on alternative boards though!

 

[NachT]

Thanks for all the replies guys! Blades are planned for the future, when I have a spare room out of the way to keep it all in so the noise doesn't cause an issue heh.

I've gone ahead and done it, the ESXi whitebox is now setup and running perfect, really chuffed with how well it all went! I do have one question, but 95% sure i'm out of luck...

The board i'm using above, it provides the CPU temperature and S.M.A.R.T data over SMBus, which ESXi cannot read. I don't suppose anyone has any nifty ways of getting either the CPU temp or S.M.A.R.T data from whitebox builds? I've searched a lot, but couldn't find anything personally. Was thinking there might have been a driver, or external hardware way to get the data from the motherboard, but haven't found nothing,