What is the right hardware?

[pradeepraul]

Thanks for the guys who helped me in a issue over docs.....

I am planning to start with a single ESX host where I can put in 5/6 VMs and later on add another host so I can use HA and DRS....

What can be a good spec for my requirement keeping in mind I will use it as a test environment

CPU speed?

HDD capacity?

RAM?

I have below few server in mind if any of you have experience or can tell me what can be the good choice will be helpful for me...

1. Dell PowerEdge™ 2650 2x Xeon 3066mhz 533, 4GB, 144GB 15K U320, 4x1G NIC DRAC

2. HP Proliant DL 380 G3 2x Intel Xeon 2.8GHz 4GB RAM HP Smart Array 5i Raid Controller with 64MB Cache 3x 72.8GB Ultra 320 15k Hot Plug HDD`s

3x36.4GB Ultra 320 15k Hot Plug HDD`s,

3. HP Proliant ML370R G3 ServerDual (2x) 3.06ghz Xeon 2GB RAM 4x 36GB U320 10K Hot Plug Hard Disks

Cheers!!!

[kbk00]

Any of the systems you listed will work great. as long as the HCL is adhered to, things will go well.

You asked about the cpu, drive, and memory configs but you are the only one that can answer those, really. The systems that you selected seem to have plenty of processing power for testing. With 5 or 6 test systems 2G of RAM would be minimum but 4 would probably be a better idea. I run 10 VMs on a dual proc host with 3 G of ram and everything works well. Of course, those VMs aren't running a gig of ram each, either It looks like your drive config should be fine on any of the systems you described. maybe 10G of disk per VM would bring you to a 72G drive (with ESX installed) which would be easily reached by what you listed.

If I could make the decision for you, I would pick the DL380. It has a good amount of disk space (with RAID protection) and a nice amount of RAM. The question is how many NICs will it have. You may want to invest in a few more if it's just the onboard ones.

Any of the systems you pick you'll be able to work with, though. Good luck!

If you found this posting to be useful, great. I didn't waste your time.

[pradeepraul]

Thanks buddy....I will be installing ESX 3.5 trial version for my home lab and learning....

Hope it will work fine....

[azn2kew]

You should plan ahead of time if you're going to expand and use ESX HA, DRS and VMotion. In that case you must have a shared SAN environment with neither SAN/iSCSI/NFS infrastructure in placed. Your current hardware is okay except the memory should be raise at least 8GB if possible because everything depends on memory and performance is your concerns.

Remember, each core support up to 8 virtual machines so you do your math. For development servers, 256-1024MB of ram is fine but production it should be at least 1024MB+ depends how you plan and types of server.

Are you going to store the VMs on local disk, than you should maximize your slot use at least 5 drives for RAID 5 configuration to provide extra layer of hardware redundancy and create all general ESX partitions and the rest should be left to VMFS if you plan to run VMs locally.

You have a choice for cheap SATA iSCSI solution using OpenFiler, FreeNAS, or Fedora Core IET as well. You can look into Datacore SANMelody as well it fits your budget and does really good job. No matter what you plan, should consider redundancy for everything in production.

1. network->dual NICs for all SC/VMotion and VM network ports.

2. storage->multipath HBAs connection to FC switch or iSCSI switch as well

3. ESX cluster ->HA, DRs, VMotion

4. Backup ->VISBU, esXpress, Veeam Backup, vRanger

5. database->regulary backup virtual center database and do performance tuning as well.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[azn2kew · Accepted solution]

If this is home lab, there are a lot of sandbox out there cheap and works fine. I have my test lab at home about $1400 with 2TB data, 8GB ram and Asus P5M2/SAS board works perfectly. Create cheap SAS/SATA iSCSI SAN with OpenFiler works like a champ. I thought you're asking for small business environment

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[vmproteau]

I personally like HP better then Dell for servers. We have been using DL380s but it's a personal preference. One other thing that might factor in is the backend SAN you plan on using. Sincee we use HP EVA SANs, by ordering HP servers and HP HBAs, compatibility worries are minimized. As far as ML vs. DL I think the differences are minimal. I believe the DL series is "density optimized" just keep in mind what type and how many expansion slots you'll need and just verify you have enough. Definately review compatibility guides.

[azn2kew]

Its funny how people college problems with ESX Purple Screen Of Death and majority of them are HP and Dell servers but that would be due to old aged out servers plus configuration errors and of course due to personal preference. I would prefer to own a Dell PE 2950 and Dell PE 6950 series those are rock solid. We have tons of this monsters running connected to Clariion, Symmetrix and DMX backend high end storages are awesome especially PE 6950s 64GB is rock solid.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[MikaA]

While any of those machines can surely run your 6 VMs you mention you would want to do HA and DRS later on. You can't with local storage. You may want to look at Dell's MD3000i iSCSI storage box, which should be fine with 2 hosts and doesn't cost that much.

Also, you want memory. If not now, you do in the future. You seem to have an inclination towards Intel but Dell has just released the R805 server which is pretty sweet, lots of memory slots, ESX 3i built-in and very affordable pricing. Worth a look.

[Berniebgf]

Don't Discount the new range of SUN x64 servers either.......

The new x4240 is a great box, worth having a look at the web for their whole range. By the way, they come with 4 x 1Gb ethernet onboard by default!

Very nice.

Bernie.

[MikaA]

Ah, yes, Sun has nice boxes as well, although they are more expensive than e.g. Dell's R805. But if that is not an issue they are great, and 1U. Also, I/O cards and memory are a lot more expensive than Dell's, which is really annoying..

[heybuzzz]

Just bought DL 380's for our new 3.5 farm. We had HP BL45 G1 blades, but I'm not a fan...