The (un)Official VMWare ESXi thread.

Harpss1ngh said:
Anyone got any recommendations for a mini ITX server running ESXi?
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I'm running ESXi 5 on my HP Microserver and it's a solid little box.

Simply add some more RAM and disks.

I've got mine running from a USB drive plugged into the back with the images on the HD's

They are sooooo cheap after the £100 cash back that I've ordered a second just as a backup.
 
K@rl said:
I'm running ESXi 5 on my HP Microserver and it's a solid little box.

Simply add some more RAM and disks.

I've got mine running from a USB drive plugged into the back with the images on the HD's

They are sooooo cheap after the £100 cash back that I've ordered a second just as a backup.
Click to expand...

Not great for a file server though as it doesn't support VT-d to pass over I/O controllers. Ideal for labbing however.
 
K@rl said:
I'm running ESXi 5 on my HP Microserver and it's a solid little box.

Simply add some more RAM and disks.

I've got mine running from a USB drive plugged into the back with the images on the HD's

They are sooooo cheap after the £100 cash back that I've ordered a second just as a backup.
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He has that and is looking to upgrade :).

Harpss1ngh said:
Finally an ESXi thread! Anyone got any recommendations for a mini ITX server running ESXi?

Eyeing up the Fractal Design R3 or R2 line case to fit a mini-ITX board. I need one for an office to host a DC/Exchange/File Server/print server & whatever else I can squeeze on to it! Need something that has low consumption, maybe an E3/i3 with about 12+ GB RAM, won't serve more than 20 users max but may need room for expansion. Probably will use an LSI/Dell Perc RAID card and use the 6 3.5" drive bays in it for RAID 10 storage!

The Intel S1200KP board really appealed to me until I found out VT-d was disabled! Would like to passthrough a RAID card so I can manage it from one of the VM's in case it goes **** up!

I'm planning a similar set up for home so if this is too overkill for a home server I'd like another recommendation if anyone can help me out. I currently have an Adaptec 5405 RAID card + storage that I'd like to move to a more powerful home server which is currently in a HP MicroServer (which I'd like to keep as a home lab) which runs ESXi. So if the server for the office isn't too overkill (keeping in mind power consumption and house bills, etc!) I'd be happy for the same spec.
Oh and I would need the spec to be supported by ESXi's HCL!
Appreciate any help!
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Bottom line is that there is nothing, TMK, mITX that is on the ESXi HCL.

There is also nothing I have found that supports VT-d and has a ESXi management network supported nic out of the box. The Intel DQ67EP is a great board and supports VT-d but the slot needs to be used for a nic for the ESXi management network. The S1200KP is an almost perfect ESXi board apart from the VT-d being, allegedly as I have not been able to test myself, disabled. The next best thing is the S1200BTS (MATX) or S1200BTL (ATX) boards but they are of course a bit bigger than you were looking for. They are however on the HCL but require ECC ram.

I an in the process of selling off my DQ67EP based setup to someone as I have moved to the S1200BTL for this exact reason. I guess you may be able to pass the two e-sata ports to a VM on the DQ67EP board and attach external e-sata das boxes for the drives but you are limited by the two e-sata connections so may get limited with more than two mechanical drives on each. Maybe a solution for home but not for the office. The S1200BTS/BTL boards (pdf) also come as ready built bare bones in 1U rack or pedestal configs. The added advantage, especially for work is the ability to adjust and add more cards for storage attachment / networking / san in the future.

As an aside, the Fractal mini array is a nice case, have one of these, although with the one fan the area above the drive cage can get a bit hot. The Lian Li PC-Q25, Q18 and Q08 are also reasonable contenders.

RB
 
RimBlock said:
He has that and is looking to upgrade :).



Bottom line is that there is nothing, TMK, mITX that is on the ESXi HCL.

There is also nothing I have found that supports VT-d and has a ESXi management network supported nic out of the box. The Intel DQ67EP is a great board and supports VT-d but the slot needs to be used for a nic for the ESXi management network. The S1200KP is an almost perfect ESXi board apart from the VT-d being, allegedly as I have not been able to test myself, disabled. The next best thing is the S1200BTS (MATX) or S1200BTL (ATX) boards but they are of course a bit bigger than you were looking for. They are however on the HCL but require ECC ram.

I an in the process of selling off my DQ67EP based setup to someone as I have moved to the S1200BTL for this exact reason. I guess you may be able to pass the two e-sata ports to a VM on the DQ67EP board and attach external e-sata das boxes for the drives but you are limited by the two e-sata connections so may get limited with more than two mechanical drives on each. Maybe a solution for home but not for the office. The S1200BTS/BTL boards (pdf) also come as ready built bare bones in 1U rack or pedestal configs. The added advantage, especially for work is the ability to adjust and add more cards for storage attachment / networking / san in the future.

As an aside, the Fractal mini array is a nice case, have one of these, although with the one fan the area above the drive cage can get a bit hot. The Lian Li PC-Q25, Q18 and Q08 are also reasonable contenders.

RB
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If the DQ67EP is anything like the DQ67SW then the eSATA is on the same controller as the SATA. I have 2 internal drives looped through the back plugged into the eSATA.

Therefore you need a cheap SATA card (SIL3114 works great) for system drive and you can then pass the 6 Intel ports to the VM.
 
dLockers said:
If the DQ67EP is anything like the DQ67SW then the eSATA is on the same controller as the SATA. I have 2 internal drives looped through the back plugged into the eSATA.

Therefore you need a cheap SATA card (SIL3114 works great) for system drive and you can then pass the 6 Intel ports to the VM.
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Quite possibly :). The problem witht he DQ67Ep then is that it only has the one PCIe slot which is needed for a nic compatible with the ESXi management network. No space for an extra storage controller. I am fairly sure USB drives would not be preferred :D.

RB
 
RimBlock said:
Quite possibly :). The problem witht he DQ67Ep then is that it only has the one PCIe slot which is needed for a nic compatible with the ESXi management network. No space for an extra storage controller. I am fairly sure USB drives would not be preferred :D.

RB
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ESXi 5 doesn't allow USB datastore, it has to be on a proper SATA controller.

So yes, looks like the EP is out of the question if you ask me. Definitely need to have more than one expansion slot. I am planning on using my x16 for a SATA card at some point, and my 2 PCI-E slots for NIC's.

My only PCI slot is used for my SIL3114 for datastores.
 
L33 said:
You're going to put a businesses essential servers onto a single, non-enterprise grade PC with a single internal storage solution? Sounds like you're just asking for trouble! One point of failure will potentially take out the lot.

Two ESXi hosts with two low cost iSCSI storage solutions and vSphere Essentials Plus licencing and vCenter Server would be a far better solution. Essentials plus allows up to 3 hosts, but more importantly includes all the 'good bits' of vSphere which will at least afford you some failover/high availability and backup: vMotion (not storage vMotion though unfortunately), HA, DRS and Data Recover which when combined with a tape drive is a decent enough backup solution for a small environment.
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It's not a big business, they currently have 7 or 8 users and it's been like that for some time, the current Windows Server 2003 SBS based server is backed up weekly and data storage is on a 5 bay synology 1010+ NAS which is backed up to external storage weekly. They don't have a fantastic budget as you can imagine for a small company trying to survive in a double dip recession!

My idea is to use local storage and keep the NAS to backup the live storage
 
dLockers said:
ESXi 5 doesn't allow USB datastore, it has to be on a proper SATA controller.

So yes, looks like the EP is out of the question if you ask me. Definitely need to have more than one expansion slot. I am planning on using my x16 for a SATA card at some point, and my 2 PCI-E slots for NIC's.

My only PCI slot is used for my SIL3114 for datastores.
Click to expand...

I was actually suggesting connecting the USB drives to the controller which is then passed to the VM, although to be honest, it was only a jokey suggestion ;).

RB
 
I have also been reviewing the Supermicro X9SCM-F & X9SCL+-F which is based around the Intel C204 PCH Chipset & Intel C202 PCH Chipset, which has multiple PCI-E slots (2 (x8) PCI-E 3.0 in x8 slots, 2 (x4) PCI-E 2.0 in x8 slots)

Techincal Specs & Technical Specs

So I am currently looking at this and the Intel DQ67SW MB.
 
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RimBlock said:
I was actually suggesting connecting the USB drives to the controller which is then passed to the VM, although to be honest, it was only a jokey suggestion ;).

RB
Click to expand...

That's an interesting idea, however!

I am currently using a USB ESXi stick otherwise I would try it!


[RXP]Andy;21995796 said:
I have also been reviewing the Supermicro X9SCM-F & X9SCL+-F which is based around the Intel C204 PCH Chipset & Intel C202 PCH Chipset, which has multiple PCI-E slots (2 (x8) PCI-E 3.0 in x8 slots, 2 (x4) PCI-E 2.0 in x8 slots)

Techincal Specs & Technical Specs

So I am currently looking at this and the Intel DQ67SW MB.
Click to expand...
Supermicro may be better as you can use ECC RAM. Bit more expensive though.
 
Harpss1ngh said:
Might just go with a mATX motherboard then and maybe a Silverstone Fortress case
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I currently have two X9SCM-F boards in machines I am building for clients but they are not ESXi server builds. They do work fine with ESXi though. Great little boards. The SCL I have not tried.

The main difference between those two models from Supermicro and the Intel board is that the Intel is consumer level and the Supermicros are server grade. The X9 boards will support VT-d with an E3 but not a i3, the Intel will support VT-d with an i5 or above. The Supermicros only support ECC ram (according to specs and I have not tried non-ECC TBH). The Intel board only supports non-ECC ram. An E3-1230 should be around the midpoint between i5 and i7 so it should not be too much of a price difference between the two. Personally I would go Supermicro over consumer Intel but if you compared like for like with the Intel S1200BTx series then it would be a bit more difficult.

RB

Oh and on the Fortress case, I have just collected a Fortress mini for another client and it is pretty nice, the outside panels are rugged and tough and look great, the inside brackets are really thin though and easily bendable by hand. Not sure if the big Fortress is the same but thought I would mention it.
 
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The X9SCM-F looks really good. If I can find a nice looking and compact case I may just go for it, It'll need to be silent, hell I wouldn't even mind sticking in under water (without overclocking however). I want to use an E3 and lots of RAM
 
Anyone had this problem before; trying to install ESXi5.

Used UNetBootIn to burn the ISO to USB, I get error;

c32 not a com32r

Any ideas?
 
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I have been looking at a few more board for a ESX environment in the mATX format and the Intel® Server Board S1200BTS seems to have caught my eye, how does this compare to the X9SCM-F?
 
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