There are many different actual NICs in the 57xx series.  Some may work, some may not.

ESX 3.5 does not recognize the NIC on a Precision 390.  My workaround was to purchase and install a pair of Intel Pro 1000 NICs.  I sourced the Intel PWLA8391GT PCI Desktop NICs from NewEgg for ~30/ea.

-jk

Can you install ESX 3.5 on the local drives, and store vm's locally or am I going to have to store them on a NAS?

I am looking for a lab setup (Under $1000) to run ESX 3.5 in.  The precision 390 sounds great, if I can indeed install ESX & Run VM's from local storage.  Can anyone speak to that?

Awesome.  So all of the Precision 390's internal SATA controllers work?  I just want to make sure Dell didn't switch controllers in the middle of the run or something.  I am about to order 1 or 2 of them from the outlet.

2 more questions:

The ESX 3.5 install worked fine from the internal CD/DVDRom?  You didn't need to do a HTTP install did you?

And, second.. I guess I only need a 1000M Intel NIC other than the machine itself and the install should go smoothly?

I appreciate the quick response.

-Mike

specs look fine.  audio and video are naturally not going to be important.  disk is fine, processor is adequate for a home lab setup.  memory will work just fine, but will definitely limit the number of VMs you can run.  The only thing I upgraded in my boxes was the memory - i kicked it up to 4GB each.  But 2GB will work just fine.

-jk

yep - 4 dimm slots

That's the one.

Depends on how you setup the controller....if you set it up to expose 1 volume or just as JBOD.

--Matt

I would set it up to expose 1 raid1 (two 1tb drives) as a 1tb volume.

However, I know in some other cheaper on-board raid cards even when I have done that in the past, Linux still recognized the individual drives.  So I was looking for someone who had used the 390 w/ raid 1/5 enabled that could tell me for sure.