Greetings to all.
Just wanted to post some notes about my experiences with two machines in the past few months. Initially I was searching for a suitable box to use in my home office to run ESXi, and while I know that a $500 Whitebox would /generally/ work- I wanted something on the HCL that I knew would work (with support for things like IPMI/hardware health monitoring and KVM over LAN).
Dell T300:
My first purchase was a very cost-effective Dell T300 Quad Core Xeon box (8GB FBDIMM RAM, 4x250GB Hotswap HD's). There's very little information about this server in general, and even less reviews on the internet. Let me be the first to say this: avoid the Dell T300 servers at /all/ costs.
The Dell T300 is an seriously cheap machine. Price wise and quality wise as well. I don't think I've ever seen such an unstable machine (DRAC5 is brutal) packed with so much /plastic/ before in my life. Flimsy plastic too- the sort of stuff you'd break if you're not paying attention when removing various baffles and clips that hold the guts of the T300 together. The RAID controller practically felt like it was going to drop out of the PCI-e slot if it wasn't secured in there by you guessed it- more plastic (yes, the card /was/ seated properly).
There are also reports that this server is "quiet". Quieter then a Poweredge 1900? Yes. Quieter then a moderately powerful workstation? No. Not by a long shot. The T300 is /obtrusively/ loud- the sort of thing you hear clear across a house and through one or two walls as well. Running it in a home office? Forget about it, if that sort noise drives you nuts. While I bought the unit with the redundant PSU's, the PSU was by far the quietest part of the T300- the 120MM and 92MM Delta fans were absolute screamers (and sounded like powered jet engines).
The T300 did run ESXi and ESX just fine- in fact, quite nicely- IPMI is fully supported and the Perc 6/i RAID controller is LSI based (so you get hardware RAID health monitoring), assuming the system doesn't bonk out within a few hours after unboxing (such as the T300 I purchased did). I guess if noise and quality don't really matter to you- then by all means, grab a T300. Just don't expect it to mingle noise-wise in a residential setting.
Since I was looking for an "acceptable" machine to run side-beside my Mac Pro in my home office, I ultimately returned the T300 (shortly after two drives failed and Dell admitted something /else/ was wrong with the machine series before they knew why I was calling).
HP ML350 G5:
The second machine I got was /considerably/ more expensive then the Dell. More then double in price- but with that the quality jumped to insanely high levels and the noise levels dropped to that of a "high-performance workstation".
I purchased the machine through CDW Canada and had the machine within a week (and all additional parts). CDW was extremely helpful getting this machine in my hands quickly and I'd recommend them for any non-international purchases inside Canada. The machine was here in approximately half the time the Dell was- probably because HP ships base systems and you upgrade the unit yourself (rather then everything being collected and installed at the factory prior to shipping) as the boxes show up.
Everything about the ML350 is leaps and bounds ahead of the Dell. iLO2 is actually stable and virtual media over ethernet seems to work fine (installed ESXi with the ISO on my main Windows workstation, over the LAN). The fans throttle down to 35% of their total speed on boot and are definitely noticeable- the system is the loudest thing in my office, but there are no prominent tones and the system is quite unobtrusive. It's just the "whoosh" of 4x92mm fans and 4x40mm fans that make the majority of the noise (the 92's being the system fans, the 40's being the PSU fans). There are a /lot/ of extreme "gaming" computers and workstations out there that are at least twice or three times louder then the ML350. The 350's noise is definately in the range of workstations rather then "servers" though, and that being said, I have absolutely zero quams sitting here with one installed on my desk behind me.
The final system I landed up with has the following specs:
Despite my best efforts to completely max the system and push the processors, I can't seem to get the fans to throttle over 35%. They /do/ throttle, but in a standard house with ambient at 22-24C, the system temperatures were well under iLO2's caution/critical values and apparently not high enough to warrant fan throttling to keep the system cool. That being said, I noticed absolutely no change in system noise regardless of the load I placed on the processors (all 8 of them) or RAM (10GB total).
As I said above, these systems are /bloody/ expensive once you throw in the upgrades (and you can't try and cheat HP and just go buy just a processor or a single HD- you need the processor upgrade /kit/ and HD sleds, both of which only come from HP), but they're probably the quietest servers on the planet and definitely acceptable in an office environment, even when decked out with upgrades (the redundant fans and redundant PSU's don't add to the noise).
If anyone has /any/ questions about the ML350, feel free to fire them off in this thread. I know there isn't much information on the ML350 out there (if any at all), so I'll do my best to answer any questions there might be about the 350's and ESX/ESXi (figuring that the one I have is sitting ~6FT from me now).
-SC
Just wanted to post some notes about my experiences with two machines in the past few months. Initially I was searching for a suitable box to use in my home office to run ESXi, and while I know that a $500 Whitebox would /generally/ work- I wanted something on the HCL that I knew would work (with support for things like IPMI/hardware health monitoring and KVM over LAN).
Dell T300:
My first purchase was a very cost-effective Dell T300 Quad Core Xeon box (8GB FBDIMM RAM, 4x250GB Hotswap HD's). There's very little information about this server in general, and even less reviews on the internet. Let me be the first to say this: avoid the Dell T300 servers at /all/ costs.
The Dell T300 is an seriously cheap machine. Price wise and quality wise as well. I don't think I've ever seen such an unstable machine (DRAC5 is brutal) packed with so much /plastic/ before in my life. Flimsy plastic too- the sort of stuff you'd break if you're not paying attention when removing various baffles and clips that hold the guts of the T300 together. The RAID controller practically felt like it was going to drop out of the PCI-e slot if it wasn't secured in there by you guessed it- more plastic (yes, the card /was/ seated properly).
There are also reports that this server is "quiet". Quieter then a Poweredge 1900? Yes. Quieter then a moderately powerful workstation? No. Not by a long shot. The T300 is /obtrusively/ loud- the sort of thing you hear clear across a house and through one or two walls as well. Running it in a home office? Forget about it, if that sort noise drives you nuts. While I bought the unit with the redundant PSU's, the PSU was by far the quietest part of the T300- the 120MM and 92MM Delta fans were absolute screamers (and sounded like powered jet engines).
The T300 did run ESXi and ESX just fine- in fact, quite nicely- IPMI is fully supported and the Perc 6/i RAID controller is LSI based (so you get hardware RAID health monitoring), assuming the system doesn't bonk out within a few hours after unboxing (such as the T300 I purchased did). I guess if noise and quality don't really matter to you- then by all means, grab a T300. Just don't expect it to mingle noise-wise in a residential setting.
Since I was looking for an "acceptable" machine to run side-beside my Mac Pro in my home office, I ultimately returned the T300 (shortly after two drives failed and Dell admitted something /else/ was wrong with the machine series before they knew why I was calling).
HP ML350 G5:
The second machine I got was /considerably/ more expensive then the Dell. More then double in price- but with that the quality jumped to insanely high levels and the noise levels dropped to that of a "high-performance workstation".
I purchased the machine through CDW Canada and had the machine within a week (and all additional parts). CDW was extremely helpful getting this machine in my hands quickly and I'd recommend them for any non-international purchases inside Canada. The machine was here in approximately half the time the Dell was- probably because HP ships base systems and you upgrade the unit yourself (rather then everything being collected and installed at the factory prior to shipping) as the boxes show up.
Everything about the ML350 is leaps and bounds ahead of the Dell. iLO2 is actually stable and virtual media over ethernet seems to work fine (installed ESXi with the ISO on my main Windows workstation, over the LAN). The fans throttle down to 35% of their total speed on boot and are definitely noticeable- the system is the loudest thing in my office, but there are no prominent tones and the system is quite unobtrusive. It's just the "whoosh" of 4x92mm fans and 4x40mm fans that make the majority of the noise (the 92's being the system fans, the 40's being the PSU fans). There are a /lot/ of extreme "gaming" computers and workstations out there that are at least twice or three times louder then the ML350. The 350's noise is definately in the range of workstations rather then "servers" though, and that being said, I have absolutely zero quams sitting here with one installed on my desk behind me.
The final system I landed up with has the following specs:
- 2x Intel E5410 Xeon Processors, 1333mhz FSB, 12MB Cache (per socket)
- 4x 2GB HP DDR667 FBDIMM RAM
- 2x 1GB HP DDR667 FBDIMM RAM
- 6x Seagate (HP) 160GB Slim (PMR) SATA Drives
- HP 128MB E200i Battery Backed Write Cache module (adds RAID5 support)
- HP PCI-X Expansion Cage (consumes Slot 6 PCI-e with a bridge card, adds 2x PCI-X slots behind the motherboard in a removable cage)
- 4x HP NC7170 Dual Port NIC cards (got these off Ebay for $25/piece)
- iLO2 Advanced License (KVM over LAN)
- Redundant Fan Kit
- Redundant PSU's
Despite my best efforts to completely max the system and push the processors, I can't seem to get the fans to throttle over 35%. They /do/ throttle, but in a standard house with ambient at 22-24C, the system temperatures were well under iLO2's caution/critical values and apparently not high enough to warrant fan throttling to keep the system cool. That being said, I noticed absolutely no change in system noise regardless of the load I placed on the processors (all 8 of them) or RAM (10GB total).
As I said above, these systems are /bloody/ expensive once you throw in the upgrades (and you can't try and cheat HP and just go buy just a processor or a single HD- you need the processor upgrade /kit/ and HD sleds, both of which only come from HP), but they're probably the quietest servers on the planet and definitely acceptable in an office environment, even when decked out with upgrades (the redundant fans and redundant PSU's don't add to the noise).
If anyone has /any/ questions about the ML350, feel free to fire them off in this thread. I know there isn't much information on the ML350 out there (if any at all), so I'll do my best to answer any questions there might be about the 350's and ESX/ESXi (figuring that the one I have is sitting ~6FT from me now).
-SC
