Well, I know this is an old box, but I figured I'd try it out.
I just installed ESXi 3.5.0 Update 2 Refresh on an old Dell Poweredge 4400. A couple months ago I installed ESX 3.5.0 on it as well.
The box has dual 933MHz procs, and almost 4GB of RAM.
I will mention that the onboard nic wasn't recognized, and the ad-in nic that I'm using, I can't elaborate on right now, as I can't get to it. But needless to say... Dave, add another one to your list.
And here's the lspci output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: ServerWorks CNB20LE Host Bridge (rev 06)
00:00.1 Host bridge: ServerWorks CNB20LE Host Bridge (rev 06)
00:06.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage IIC (rev 7a)
00:0f.0 ISA bridge: ServerWorks OSB4 South Bridge (rev 50)
00:0f.2 USB Controller: ServerWorks OSB4/CSB5 OHCI USB Controller (rev 04)
00:11.0 Host bridge: ServerWorks CNB20LE Host Bridge (rev 06)
00:11.1 Host bridge: ServerWorks CNB20LE Host Bridge (rev 06)
06:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 80960RM (rev 01)
06:04.1 RAID bus controller: Dell Computer Corporation PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller 3/Di (rev 01)
07:06.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AIC-7880U (rev 02)
08:06.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557/8/9 (rev 08)
Cheers.
BTW, Dave, I think I'm in the lead for the slowest box...
Jase McCarty
Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center
(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach
Definitely the oldest / slowest so far. But I do have an HP LT6000r - 700 MHz running 2.5 that may need an upgrade
That's encouraging - I have a couple older servers of about that flavor that I may have to give it a shot on!
Hello Jase,
I'm very interested in your post regarding running ESXi on some elderly PE4400 servers.
We have two of these boxes at work (Dual 800MHz Xeons and Dual 1GHz Xeon's, both with 4GB Ram and onboard Dell PERC controllers). And my own PE4400 of the same spec as the dual 1GHz server at home . I've installed the very latest ESXi 3.5 on all of them and it goes on just fine and detects the onboard NIC too.
The question I have is that disk access seems failry slow (as in as little as 2MB/s when running HDTune on a Win 2008 server VM on the Dual 1GHz Xeon Server). I currently run RAID 5 across 8 disks that are brand new 73GB Fujitus 15Krpm SCSI SCA drives. I have also seen this slow access from an Ubuntu 8.04 server VM too.
On the Dual 800MHz server I am runnning 8 x 18Gb 10Krpm disks and have used the RAID controller to create a number of different arrays to ascertain whether the slow disk access is a function of the type of RAID volume configuration. I've created RAID stripe (8K, 16K, 32K, 64K), RAID 5 (8K, 16K, 32K, 64K)and RAID 10 stripe/mirror (32K, 64K) arrays. And intend to run some more benchmarking on these to see if there is an optimal configuration.
Have you seen the same slow disk access? Or have any pointers where I can go and do some more work on?
Best regards
Alex
Hello Jase,
Here's some promising test results for the elderly PowerEdge 4440 - there's life in the old box yet!
Server Hardware Configuration:
Dell Power Edge 4400
Dual 1GHz Xeon
4Gb ECC RAM
Dual Channel Scsi Backplane (4x2)
8 x Fugitsu 73Gb 15Krpm Hard Disks
Perc 4/Dc Raid Controller 128Mb Cache, Battery Backup Unit
1 x Intel Pro 1000 Dual port NIC.
2 x Netgear FA311 NIC's
1 x Onboard Intel 100Mbit NIC
RAID Configuration:
RAID Type: 0 & 5
RAID Stripe Size: 16 - 128Kb
RAID Write Cache: Write Back
RAID Read Cache: Adaptive
Disk Access: Direct IO
Disk Size: All disks are 20Gb raid volumes on the controller.
VMWare Configuration:
ESXi 3.5.0 110271 (Update 2) installed to a locally hosted virtual disk (vmhba0:0:0).
1 x VM running Windows 2008 Server on a 10Gb locally hosted virtual disk (vmhba0:1:0 also used for the first disk in
test).
There is one 10Gb VMware virtual disk created within in each 20Gb RAID disk.
The results are compiled in the attached PDF.
Best regards
Alex