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tatung70
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low cost servers to run ESX and 64 bit Vm's

What are a couple fo models of servers I can get (for use at my home) to run ESX on? I need it to be able to run 64 bit Vms.

Does not matter to me, Dell, IBM, HP. Just the cost.

Example: 2 years ago I bought 2 Dell 1600SC servers for about $1000 each and it runs ESX fine. However due to the CPU, they dont support 64 bit Vms.

Thanks

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jlee2
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Any Core 2 T6xxx or higher should run ESX fine and support 64-bit Operating Systems. For desktop chips, anything above and including the T6300 has VT support, for laptops, anything above and including the T5600 has VT), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microprocessors if you're not sure on the exact processor. You should be able to avoid the high cost of SCSI controllers and SCSI disks while also giving yourself the flexibility to use high end features like vMotion and HA by setting up one more server and installing OpenFiler (http://www.openfiler.org) on it to serve as the iSCSI SAN. OpenFiler has no problems serving IDE or SATA drives up over iSCSI.

So then you can install ESX to a SATA or IDE drive locally and host your VMs on the iSCSI SAN. Thus, you can use low end, consumer hardware and keep your test box pretty cheap.

Note of course, that none of this hardware would be certified/supported but it should all work fine.

Jay

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esiebert7625
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You might check out the HP ML350 G5, it is on the ESX3 HCL...

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-241434-241646-241477-1121586.html

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Dave_Mishchenko
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If you don't mind a whitebox here's an option: Whitebox on ASUS P5M2 - http://www.xtravirt.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=67

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jlee2
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Any Core 2 T6xxx or higher should run ESX fine and support 64-bit Operating Systems. For desktop chips, anything above and including the T6300 has VT support, for laptops, anything above and including the T5600 has VT), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microprocessors if you're not sure on the exact processor. You should be able to avoid the high cost of SCSI controllers and SCSI disks while also giving yourself the flexibility to use high end features like vMotion and HA by setting up one more server and installing OpenFiler (http://www.openfiler.org) on it to serve as the iSCSI SAN. OpenFiler has no problems serving IDE or SATA drives up over iSCSI.

So then you can install ESX to a SATA or IDE drive locally and host your VMs on the iSCSI SAN. Thus, you can use low end, consumer hardware and keep your test box pretty cheap.

Note of course, that none of this hardware would be certified/supported but it should all work fine.

Jay

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