Hardware requirements to virtualize SBS 2011

[Sonoma3000]

Hello

What do you think - is the hardware strong enough or is it oversized?

I want to run two virtual machines with ESXi 5. First virtual machine should run Small Business Server 2011 and the second Windows Server 2008 R2. On the Windows Server 2008 R2 vm is only one application running that don't generate heavy load. As a maximum there will work 5 concurrent users.

I plan to buy the following server:

Dell PowerEdge T610

Intel Xeon E5620, 4C, 2.40GHz, 12M Cache, 5.86GT/s, 80W TDP, Turbo, HT, DDR3-1066MHz

No Additional Processor

24GB Memory for 1 CPU, DDR3, 1333MHz (3x8GB Dual Ranked LV RDIMMs)

PERC H700 Integrated RAID Controller, 512MB NV Cache

Internal SD Module with 1GB SD Card for embedded virtualization options

C3 - RAID 5 for PERC H700 Controller, 3-8 HDDs
Energy Smart Power Supply, Non-Redundant (1 PSU), 570W, Power Saving BIOS Setting

(4) 300GB, SAS 6Gbps, 3.5-in, 15K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)

Embedded Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet LOM with 2P TOE

iDRAC6 Express Server Management Card

I am especially unsure if I should buy two prozessor or if one E5620 would suffice.

Thank you for your answers.

[ashleymilne]

I think the hardware you have picked is more then capable of running the two VM's you have described. I have an older Dell server, Power Edge 2900 wth two older dual core Xeon's and its running multiple VM's, one of which is an SBS 2011 server with 4GB of RAM and two virtual CPU's, its not for production though. If you plan to run more VM's in the future, speck your RAM accordingly, it can be costiler to upgrade RAM later then at the time of purchase. Also, you haven't mentioned how you are configuring your discs, which RAID, do you think you'll have enough disc space for future growth?

[Sonoma3000]

@ashleymilne

Thank you for your post. Do I understand you correctly - your PowerEdge server does have 2 physical cpu? I read that the SBS 2011 should have 4 Cores. My planned server does have only one CPU - I am afraid that it slows down the entire server if one virtual machine can use all physical cores.

RAM: I will think about it. Maybe I will buy 32 GB.

Harddisks: I plan to make a RAID 5 array with 3 Disks. The harddisk space should be enough for the next 3 years - there isn't a big growth in sight. And I think I could buy later more drives.

By the way: I read now that the new ESXi 5 free version does only support one physical CPU - is that true?

[ashleymilne]

Yes my PE 2900 has two physical CPU's and I did assign it four virtual CPU's. Since your SBS 2011 will not be a productoin machine, and your PE 610 will have one quadcore CPU, I think ESX5i will be able to load balance the CPU requirements well enough, however should you choose to add more VM's in the future and should any of those be for production, you may find CPU cycles being taxed between VM's, so a second CPU might be a good consideration. I am not aware of any CPU limiation with the free version of ESXi5, so I cannot say.

[Sonoma3000]

Thank you for your answer!