Hi all,
I'm trying to put together a VERY cheap whitebox ESX server. Preferably in a small minitower enclosure, cheap dual core CPU (AMD or Intel) and 4GB of memory. Storage is to be external (via an Adaptec 29160 SCSI card), so not an issue here.
I have been looking everywhere for chipsets that will work with ESX. However, it is very hard to find this information. Out of a number of forum posts here and there, I figured out some chipsets that will/should work with ESX:
INTEL
Intel 3000MCH
Intel 82875P
Intel E7221
Intel 845
Intel 850
Intel 865
Intel 915
Intel 945
Intel 965
Intel 975
NVIDIA NFORCE
Nforce 430
Nvidia C51PV / Nvidia MCP51
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16
nForce 6150LE
NVIDIA nForce 2200 Professional
VIA
VIA K8T800
VIA KM 266
ServerWorks
HT1000
Anyone able to extend this list?
The chipset is probably the least crucial thing. Supported storage and network controllers, that's where most whiteboxes fail. My MSI P35 Platinum board works perfectly with ESX 3.5 (one quadcore CPU, 4 GB ram, a PCIe Intel Pro/1000PT gigabit NIC and a PCI Promise SATA300 TX2 Plus SATA controller).
bertdb: do you use a intel Pro/1000PT desktop adaptor? I like to know if this nic works with ESX 3.5.
Is it possible to use a (supported) SCSI card with SCSI to SATA adapters to connect 2 or 3 SATA drives to ESX without RAID?
Hi,
i used a
Intel Pro 1000GT PCI works
Intel Pro 1000PT PCIe works also
bye r.
ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.
Hi,
never tried that, but a Promise Sata300 TX4 works and you can connect SATA drives.
This card is detected as SCSI controller so you can create VMFS volumes.
http://communities.vmware.com/message/861670#861670
ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.
That's great if you have ESX 3.5 :smileysilly:
ESX Server 3.5 supports selected SATA devices connected to dual SAS/SATA controllers. This support is limited to ESX Server 3.5. It is not included with ESX Server 3.0.x.
Do the TX4-card still work if you have ESXi 3.5?