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DI_Admin
Contributor
Contributor

ESX 3i (installable) on a Dell Poweredge 2650?

I would like to know if ESX 3i installable should run on a dual Xeon Dell Poweredge 2650 with a Perc3/di RAID controller. Does anyone know?

Thanks!

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35 Replies
cheeko
Expert
Expert

Looks good ...

Check the HCL here: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_systems_guide.pdf

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DI_Admin
Contributor
Contributor

Actually that doc shows that the 2650 is not compatible with 3i. Howerver; after reading how people here have gotten 3i to run on all sorts of hardware including laptops, I have a hard time believing that. I have no clue as to what specifically makes a server "compatible" or not. My best guess as of now is that it should work, but I'm not sure. Maybe someone who has run 3i on a 2650 can comment on functionality and stability.

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cheeko
Expert
Expert

Thats right, i was looking in the 3.5 row (cause i personally do not care that much about 3i) ...

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Formatter
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

So is it possible or maybe not. I amthinking of buying a 2650 for this but dont want to if ESXi wont install.

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

If you're buying new, I would go with a 2900 III or 2950 III. It's best to stick with supported just in case you have to call support. Will a 2650 with Perc 3/Di work - I'm 99% sure you'd be Ok. A 2500 with Perc 3/Di was recently tested and works OK - http://www.vm-help.com/Whitebox_HCL.php.

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

This post has been moved to the ESXi forum.

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pingwu
Contributor
Contributor

I am able to run ESX3i with Dell 2650s.




Ping Wu

Ping Wu
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Pinwu

I would say as long ass they have the perc/3 you should be ok from what I am reading. That is Perc 3 or better.

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pingwu
Contributor
Contributor

I can't start up VM, if I fast forward the system 60+ day later even I apply the ESXi license.

Ping Wu

Ping Wu
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nick_couchman
Immortal
Immortal

Can you send the output of the licensing screen?

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pingwu
Contributor
Contributor

Ping Wu
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nick_couchman
Immortal
Immortal

It's quite possible that fast-forwarding the date is causing some other issue than a licensing problem. Your licensing is installed correctly, and if this were a licensing problem you'd get a message specifically about your eval license having expired or VMware would say something along the lines of 'can't power on this VM b/c there's no license for it.' The issue you're experiencing doesn't seem to be license-related.

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jburleigh
Contributor
Contributor

I just purchase a Dell Poweredge 2650 off of Ebay for $200.00 plus 24.95 for shipping. I pretty good deal if you ask, Dual 2.4 Ghz Xeons, 4 GB of RAM, and two 36GB hard drives. I picked up 3 more drives from www.computergiants.com for the data set. It was just delivered today, and I can't wait to get it tested. I will update after some testing.

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kpc
Contributor
Contributor

yeah not bad for $200, we are using brand new 2900's here for ESXi and some ESX, you can get 10 disks in those servers. We started off using 2650's but you do start to notice the CPU struggling when you have a few machines on it, depends what you're running of course.

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jburleigh
Contributor
Contributor

As of right now it is a hardware replacement for some old servers for my small business. I will retire a dual processor, Dell 1300, and single processor PIII 500 Compaq server. ESX 3i installed without a hitch with the PERC 3/di controller. This server should be enough to run small business server and a few others. The RAID configuration is not optimal right now, I have to wait for the drives to come in. Then I will get it configured correctly.

So ESX 3i works on a DELL Poweredge 2650. Period.

At my full time job or as my wife would say my real job, we just retired a couple of older IBM 445 8-way boxes, and replaced them with the X3650 dual quad core with 48 GB of RAM. 4 of them are attached to a DS4400 SAN and our whole production environment is virtualized. Over 100 VMs on those 4 boxes. From our exchange servers to our Oracle 10g databes.

My wife still thinks my side business is just a hobby. I might pick up a Dell 2850 off of EBay for the 64bit capability. I just got my MCITP Enterprise cert and the class got a copy of Server 2008 with 5 cals. So I am itching to get everything moved over.

John

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gary1218
Contributor
Contributor

I just finished installing ESXi installable on a Poweredge 2650, with 4GB RAM and a RAID array that I just expanded to 1.09TB. I also updated the BIOS and PERC firmware and the BMC. The installation went without a hitch, I installed the VI client and then used VMware converter to migrate a VM over to it. That also went without a hitch. But, after booting up the server on the new hardware, the thing took 20 minutes to boot, and performs terribly. I checked all of my settings, everything looks OK, updated VMWare tools and rebooted, no change. Right now CPU and memory use is extremely spikey, and the system has widely varying responses to pings, as well as mouse and keyboard pauses when using the console on it.

THEN I checked the HCL to find the 2650 isn't compatible. If I can't resolve it, it's going to be easy for VMware to say it's because it's a 2650. I wish I knew what ABOUT the 2650 is the problem!

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pingwu
Contributor
Contributor

I am running Dell PE 2650 with 6GB of RAM, with 5 of 150GB 15K RPM Disks on RAID 5. The performance seems OK to me.

Could that be the speed of your HDD and VM memory over allocated?

Ping Wu

Ping Wu
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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

Welcome to the VMware Community forums.

1) Did the virtual CPU count for the VM change when you moved it over?

2) What does the CPU in the VM display (i.e. same spikes as you see on the host).

3) Is it the VM generating the CPU spikes on the host or host processes? On the performance graph, you can see the CPU number for both the host and VMs.

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gary1218
Contributor
Contributor

Gee, I don't think so. It's 4GB of RAM in mine, with (5) 300GB 15k drives, dual 2.8Ghz Xeon processors. Only one VM and it currently shows me usage data of 1.36GB out of the 4GB RAM, and 1920Mhz out of (2 x 2.786Mhz), visually both in the lower 3rd of the resource graphs in the VI Client. If it weren't for the performance monitor swinging wildly and the poor console performance you wouldn't know to look at VI Client that anything was wrong at all!

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