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gkpyeung
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One VMWare Esxi 5.1 server host 10 Windows 7 Pro O/S

Hi,

I am planning to setup 10 Windows 7 VM on a signle ESXi 5.1 server (all will be assigned 4GB ram and each should install a Bently reporting software

I just want to see whether the below server spec is sufficient or not

Dell 1U Server

Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2440 2.40GHz, 15M Cache, 7.2GT/s QPI, Turbo, 6C, 95W, Max Mem 1333MHz

32GB / 64GB RAM

4 x 1TB SATA Harddisk (RAID 5)

2 x 1GB LAN

10 x Winodws 7 Pro 32b VMs running the Bently Reporting software (currently running on some Windows 7 / Windows XP 2GB ram workstations)

Please advise the captioned specification is sufficeint ?!!

Thanks

1 Solution

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JarryG
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"...Indeed, the VM ESXi 5.1 is the FREE one..."

Do not forget free ESXi (hypervisor) is limited to 32GB RAM. No need to buy 64GB. And IIRC, for xeon-cpu you must have ecc-dimms.

If 32GB is not enough for all VMs and you can not (will not) buy i.e. Essential license, you can buy fast SSD and use it for VM-swap.

_____________________________________________ If you found my answer useful please do *not* mark it as "correct" or "helpful". It is hard to pretend being noob with all those points! 😉

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6 Replies
jrmunday
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I thing your biggest bottleneck is going to be RAM, followed by disk latency so I would definitely go with 64GB RAM. What controller card are you planning on using? Make sure you use the cache or you may have performance problems.

Is this your only host? I'm just wondering how you're going to cater for host maintenance / hardware isses without affecting these VM's?

vExpert 2014 - 2022 | VCP6-DCV | http://www.jonmunday.net | @JonMunday77
Virtualinfra
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This ESXi will be licensed or your planning to use free Hypervisor.

32 GB or 64 GB RAM,

What is the vCPU requirement?

In general don't overcommit the physical resources(the total number of vram and vcpu should be equal or less than the total Number physical core and physical ram (+ 10% Physical RAM and CPU for rooms and performance suggested)).

10 VMs X4 GB vRAM = 40 vRAM, incase all the 10 VMs will used during business hours, then consider using 64 GB RAM to avoid performance issue.

Incase if the resource usage during the peak time on 10 VM will be less than 3 GB, then you can go with 32 GB physical RAM. But consider having some rooms in the physical capacity, it will help to increase resource on vms if you run into performance issue.

Thanks & Regards Dharshan S VCP 4.0,VTSP 5.0, VCP 5.0
gkpyeung
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Hi,

Thanks for the prompt reply....

Indeed, the VM ESXi 5.1 is the FREE one and I am going to create 8 VM instead of 10, so 2 is for addition resource room.

Apart from that, DELL server RAM is very expensive and anyone tried to use general computer ram (Kingston) and installed to DELL R610 server ?!

Kingston 8GB ram is HK$ 300.00 (so 8x8=64GB ram=HK$ 2400.00) but Dell's 32GB ram needs HK$ 14,000.00)...

Thanks

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gkpyeung
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Physical CPU is : Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2440 2.40GHz, 15M Cache, 7.2GT/s QPI, Turbo, 6C, 95W, Max Mem 1333MHz

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schepp
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You do realise that the DELL RAM has probably ECC and you are comparing it to normal desktop Kingston RAM?

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JarryG
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"...Indeed, the VM ESXi 5.1 is the FREE one..."

Do not forget free ESXi (hypervisor) is limited to 32GB RAM. No need to buy 64GB. And IIRC, for xeon-cpu you must have ecc-dimms.

If 32GB is not enough for all VMs and you can not (will not) buy i.e. Essential license, you can buy fast SSD and use it for VM-swap.

_____________________________________________ If you found my answer useful please do *not* mark it as "correct" or "helpful". It is hard to pretend being noob with all those points! 😉