Thinking of building an energy effencient server for VMWare ESXi - Spec help on CPU/Motherboard

DJMK4

DJMK4

DJMK4

Soldato
Joined
1 Dec 2004
Posts
23,134
Location
S.Wales
Hi all,

I got rid of my HP Microserver NL36 recently, looking to build another small form factor or smallish machine to run VMWare ESXi on to run my VM's on.

My main requirments are:

Needs to be small(ish)

Needs to be energy efficient so I don't have to worry too much about running costs

Decedent CPU (I dont want nothing like an i5 2500k or an i7 but something along the lines of a fairly usable quad core, as I don't want it to break the bank, I dont mind going for an AMD quad core.

I want to try and maximize the amount of RAM I can put in, so decent ish future proofing when it comes to selecting a motherboard/max ram it can take

I will be trying to pick up these bits from the members market

I guess I am just looking for a bit of guidence mainly on the CPU/Motherboard sector on this request, as I have been out of the AMD market for a while, want would you recommend?
 
Something haswell for the CPU, then undervolt it.

I bought a i3-3220 as it has ECC. Then undervolted it by 15%.

I'm going to swap it for a quad xeon as my demands have gone up, but any of the i5 quads would do the job if you don't care about ECC.

AMD isn't suitable for this job as their performance to watt ratio is below that of Intel.

My server draws 35-40W at idle with 8 drives.
 
Concorde Rules said:
Something haswell for the CPU, then undervolt it.

I bought a i3-3220 as it has ECC. Then undervolted it by 15%.

I'm going to swap it for a quad xeon as my demands have gone up, but any of the i5 quads would do the job if you don't care about ECC.

AMD isn't suitable for this job as their performance to watt ratio is below that of Intel.

My server draws 35-40W at idle with 8 drives.
Click to expand...

Just a quick question, what motherboard are you using with that? (I'll take a stab at a dedicated server board because of the ecc compatibility?)
 
Would any of the older gen quad cores suffice? given this is going to be a cheap build, for some ESXi VM Labs, primarily want to use it to run network simulators like GNS3 and a few VM's

Concidering I could comfortably get 4 VM's on a 1.3ghz microserver with 8gb ram running, this shouldn't be "too" difficult, but I want to try and keep the cost down a little.
 
Doco said:
Just a quick question, what motherboard are you using with that? (I'll take a stab at a dedicated server board because of the ecc compatibility?)
Click to expand...

Asus P8B-WS.

DJMK4 said:
Would any of the older gen quad cores suffice? given this is going to be a cheap build, for some ESXi VM Labs, primarily want to use it to run network simulators like GNS3 and a few VM's

Concidering I could comfortably get 4 VM's on a 1.3ghz microserver with 8gb ram running, this shouldn't be "too" difficult, but I want to try and keep the cost down a little.
Click to expand...

They would but they don't fall under energy efficiency unless it is sandy bridge or later.

A core i3-3xxx or 4xxx would be faster than the microserver...

If AMD had a decent energy efficient processor then they wouldn't be lagging behind Intel in terms of IPC performance, etc.

Intel all the way at the moment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom