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td_sk
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Can any one suggest for an entry level server for ESX4 & ESX 4i

Hi all,

I am looking for an entry level server in HP or ACER for

installing ESX 4 please advice. I am confused with HCL

Message was edited by: RDellimmagine to improve formatting

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MHAV
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DL160G6, DL160seG6, DL170hG6, DL180G6, DL320G6 (Intel X5500 Proc)

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Michael Haverbeck

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Regards Michael Haverbeck Check out my blog www.the-virtualizer.com

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MHAV
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DL160G6, DL160seG6, DL170hG6, DL180G6, DL320G6 (Intel X5500 Proc)

Regards

Michael Haverbeck

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Regards Michael Haverbeck Check out my blog www.the-virtualizer.com
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colbi
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I just picked up a DL160 G6 (not on HCL) and put in a 3ware 9650SE RAID controller (approved HCL). Decided to give ESXi a try and ran across that "Unable to find a supported device to write the VMware ESXi 4.0.0 image to" error when running through the initial install. I'm thinking there's a way around this or, perhaps, it will be on the HCL soon? Couldn't find much RE this subject.

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Dave_Mishchenko
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The install CD doesn't include 3Ware drivers. On the customizing oem.tgz page on vm-help.com there's a link to the download for the drivers.

Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

New book in town - vSphere Quick Start Guide -http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/08/12/new-book-in-town-vsphere-quick-start-guide/.

Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL - http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21.

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bulletprooffool
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Plenty options depending on budget,

But I would really push for at least a midrange piece of kit, to get proper value out of ESX. Specifically something that will leave teh ability to upgrade as you go (more Disk / more RAM)

If I was buying HP I'd go low end DL 3xx, rather than high end DL1xx

Otherwise you're going to end up with a piece of tin, with very poor consolidation ratio

One day I will virtualise myself . . .
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colbi
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I would have to both agree and disagree with the last remark. I definitely agree that the DL 360 G6 has more VM capabilities right out of the box as it's listed under the HCL for ESX and ESXi. And the dual power supplies is good. However, the DL 160 G6 and DL 320 G6 are nearly the same machine and capabilities... Intel 5520 chipset, 18 banks of memory (DL160 lists 144GB and DL360 lists 192GB max... cause when printing the doc the 16GB chips weren't in manufacturing. DL160 is taking into consideration using 8GB chips, which are crazy expensive by the way. can only imagine what the 16GB's will be), and 4 standard 3.5" hard drives or 8 - 2.5". The main reason I didn't want the DL360 G6 is because all of them come with the HP Smart Array controller.

I highly recommend you do your research and find out all the miniscule details as you don't want to have any bad surprises from a common assumption now or even down the road... memory capabilities down to the types and amounts to put in each slot, DL 160 G6 hot plug or not giving you a full height full length pci-express slot or not, beware that they generally don't come with a dvd/cd drive, etc.

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mhansen
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I just picked up 2 HP dl145 G2's with 2 opterons and 4GB of ram each for $149 a piece, vSphere ESXi installed and ran just fine with 1 built in SATA drive. I am using an older DL380G2 (non-64bit xeon 3.06) as an openfiler 2.3 box for iscsi. so far everything is working just fine for my little lab.

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VMSystems
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We have a Lenovo RD120 with QLogic iSCSI card. It's been good to us.

If you want to go even cheaper we built 2 VERY basic boxes to play with. ASUS motherboards and generic hardware. The only issue we had was the NIC. An easy swap fixed that.

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JimmyD
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I'm interested. Can you elaborate on your "we build" statement.

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golddiggie
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What's your budget level? How many VM's do you plan on running? Do you have a SAN for VM storage or is it going to be all local disk? Are you looking to get something brand new, or open to other options? I would look on the Dell Outlet at the Precision Workstation T7400, T5500, T7500, etc. systems. They have units listed with E5400 series Xeon processors (dual sockets starting around $1600 USD)... You could get one with a single socket, get a second Xeon later (just don't wait too long) and any other hardware you may need in order to properly run ESX/ESXi 4. There are other models listed, I would just be careful not to go below the 5300 series Xeon processor. I would also opt for at least one quad core. That might be where I get my next/second ESX/ESXi host server... Especially since the PWS T7400 I'm running now is doing an excellent job...

VMware VCP4

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aazpf1
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Hey,

i am considering buying a Dl145 dual AMD Opteron with 8gb ram.

I have two options actually:

First would be with one 1x 2TB SATA-2 hard disk

Second with 2x 72 GB UWSCSI 320

which one would work best with ESX; which controller/storage did you have

thanks, appreciate

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p34nuts008
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This thread maybe too old to comment, but will will probably help other members looking for the right answer regarding ESXi 4 on HP DL145-G2.

I had these servers from e-bay as well with BIOS version 2.16 (03/23/200) with SCSI option and 2x2.6Mhz Opteron. It has an on-board SATA controller for two. I tried to install both ESXi 4.0.0 and 4.1.0 with all success with the following setups:

- Both SCSI disk option, install ESXi on first disk.

- ESXi on first SCSI disk (disk0) and datastore2 on 500GB SATA (also tried 1TB without issue).

- ESXi on one SATA disk (1TB) and datastore2 on SCSI disk. BIOS setup to boot on SATA disk.

- ESXi on single SATA disk (500GB or 1TB).

- Even tried upgrade from ESXi 4.0.0 to ESXi 4.1.0 without issue.

NOTE: If you have SATA disk formatted to GPT partition, you wont be able to use it as datastore in ESXi 4.x.0. Even you tried the fdisk command within the shell. You will need to erase the GPT partition by FreeBSD live CD or any Linux distro with better version of fdisk that supports GPT.

The bottom line... I installed and run 64-bit guest OSes (Linux and Windows) without any issues on DL145-G2. This also concludes that DL145-G2 is better than DL360-G4 when it comes to running 64-bit guest OS on ESXi 4.x.0 and investment cost. This is also good for non-RAID based NAS setup on ESXi 4.x.0 where you can make use of large SATA disks.

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