Setting up a new VMware infrastructure

[learnlearn]

Hi All,

I am looking to purchase a new server for homd  use/home lab, HP ML110 G5 Dual Core 2.33Ghz x64 server, I used to have a HP DL380 G3 server with ESX 32 bit on it. The infrastructure that I'm looking to setup is as follows.

ESX x64

Mainly used for databases

I currently have ESX at the moment, and some hosts built on it and I dont want to redo the whole thing from scratch, the hosts consists of a DC and a few SQL instances.

My objectives are as follows

1. Build the ESX on x64 following best practices, I would appreciate a site with document step by step guide and straight to the point.
2. Migrate existing hosts.
3. A way to clone hosts, I want to build about 5-6 hosts, similar configuration but I understand its going to be a repetitive task and I'm looking for the most efficient way to do this.
4. The hosts will be for SQL server databases, so best practices on how to configure VMWARE to allow SQL run optimally and some gotchas

The specification for the server is as follows. If anyone knows any other HP or Dell server to recomend, that would be ideal. I am after a quiet tower.

Intel® Xeon® Dual Core Processor (3065) 2.33 GHz - 64-Bit - 1333Mhz - Intel VT-x

8 GB RAM

1TB SATA RAID (2 x 500GB)

[DSTAVERT]

There is little difference between ESXi 3.5 and ESXi 4 or 5 procedurally or from the interface perspective. ESXi 4.x or 5 are installed from CD. I would go through the getting started webcasts.

You should be able to copy your existing VMs from your ESXi 3.5 machine to the new ESXi host. Use Veeam FastSCP http://veeam.com to copy from host to host and then use the datastore browser on the new host to add the copied machines to the inventory. You can use VMware Converter to create a clone of an existing machine or export to OVF from the File menu on the vSphere Client.