Dell Poweredge 1950 vs 2950 vs Homebrew

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Poweredge 1950[/b]

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=becwek1&s=bsd

Quad Core Intel® Xeon® E5310, 2x4MB Cache, 1.60GHz, 1066MHz FSB \[add $199]

FREE UPGRADE to 2GB 667MHz (4x512MB), Single Ranked DIMMs add $0

PERC 5/i, Integrated Controller Card \[add $299]

FREE UPGRADE to PERC 5/i, Integrated Controller Card add $0

Special Offer

SAS 5/i Integrated, No RAID \[Included in Price]

Poweredge 2950[/b]

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=becwfk1&s=bsd

PERC 5/i, x4 Backplane, Integrated Controller Card \[add $299]

FREE! PERC 5/i, x4 Backplane, Integrated Controller Card add $0

PERC 5/i, x6 Backplane, Integrated Controller Card \[add $299]

FREE! PERC 5/i, x6 Backplane, Integrated Controller Card add $0

Special Offer

PERC 5/i, x8 Backplane, Integrated Controller Card \[add $299]

FREE! PERC 5/i, x8 Backplane, Integrated Controller Card add $0

SAS 5/i Integrated, No RAID \[Included in Price]

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My question is if any of these hard drive contollers support VMFS on SATA II?

I like the idea of just buying a complete solution that will allow me to learn ESX but I am not against building a system to do this either (just more nervous about a homebrew solution).

I have seen some threads on the forum here for building a reasonably priced dual core setup with an e6300 (1.86 Ghz Dual Core) but I am not clear on how many VMs that this setup will comfortably support?

If it is mostly a question of memory then I can see that a home built setup has a number of advantages - cheaper SATA II drives (VMs can easily be backed up i think) and cheaper standard DDR memory. I plan to look at exchange, Active Directory, a couple of websites, FTP and printer, and firewall and routing maybe even Citrix. So this will all need to be divied up between several VMs - although I do not think that the actual load on these machines will be that high.

I love the Rack form factor and so I am torn between the two i think at the moment.

I understand that SATA II is not supported and does not have the reliabilty of SAS but I think that the cost saving and what I percieve to be the relative ease of backing up VMs make this a good choice?

Do you think that something like the e6300 with 4Gbs of memory is a better solution that the Poweredge servers given my situation?

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

As you say it won't be supported, but if the card itself is then the SATA drives will work OK. See this link for a white box that does what you're looking to do: http://www.xtravirt.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=67

In terms of running your VMs, memory will be the bigger factor. As an example I have 7 - 8 VMs running on my home servers - 3.0 GHs Xeons and given that the CPU loads aren't heavy the limiting factor for me is memory - 3 - 5 GB in each server. If you're looking at 5 -6 VMs at 512 MB each then you'll need 3 GB of RAM - but round it up to 4 GB for overhead.

For backup you can use your own scripts or something like the free edition from www.esxpress.com which will backup to an FTP site (several other options are available as well).

I've been thinking of adding another server and have been deciding between a whitebox myself and a Dell like you're looking at. I'm leaning towards to whitebox as I'll be able to add more memory for a cheaper price.

You might also want to take a look around the forums at setting up an iSCSI server. This would allow you to host your VMFS on a second server without having to worry so much about local storage. The bonus would be that when you add a second ESX server you can start to play with vmotion.

[mcwill]

SAS 5/i Integrated, No RAID \[Included in Price]

You cannot use the above in conjuction with a SATA drive to provide vmfs storage.

In order to use a supported controller (as the SAS 5/i is) with SATA, the SATA drives have to be configured into a RAID volume. (I assume it provides a logical isolation between ESX and the raw SATA device)

The PERC 5/i will be fine as long as you configure a RAID.

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Thanks very much for your help guys - I am now leaning more towards the homebrew solution to save a few hundred dollars.

I really appreciate your advise.