I'm going to buy a Dell server thats fully supported by esxi 4.1 I already looked through there HCL but when I say fully supported, I mean FULLY SUPPORTED. I've purchased servers before that where on vmwares hcl but esxi couldn't show server stats info like fan speed, raid status, system temp, etc etc. It booted fine and it was able to host vms but thats it. None of the extra stuff was supported with that motherboard. I'm looking for a dell that is fully supported out of the box, no drivers to install. I also need raid support and remote management. I've heard of "drac" cards but I don't know which one is right for me and I've never worked with there line of raid controllers. Based on user experience, can anyone recommend a dell server that fits my needs...
remotely get to bios, poweron/off, update bios, kvm to screen
see fan speed, raid status, drive failure status, fan failure, core temp
1U or 2U
at lest 4 hotswap SAS 6Gbs drives
2 built in nics
supports dual cpus
uses LGA 1366 socket and can support xeon X5680 cpu
internal usb head (nice to have)
can support DDR3 SDRAM ECC Reg DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)
raid controller
can split storage into custom LUN sizes (need to have)
write cache with BBU (nice to have but not a need to have)
I know it's a big list but I tried asking dell and they keep giving me a sales guy who doesn't know vmware and just wants to push me into a sale.
