Hi Guys,
Great forum.
I'm looking at setting up a home ESX test environment...
Looking at some cheap ex-lease server hardware to get me going.
I'm about to look through the hardware compatiability list, however does anyone have one of these (servers) setup as an ESX 3 server?
Virtual Centre... hmm... not sure yet.. probably just a simple whitebox unknown brand will do?
Here's the link to the potential candidate in question... feedback welcomed..
FYI - I'm looking to setup probably 2 VM's on this box..
One being an ISA server (firewall) the other being a web server/mail server. (test only!).
HP Proliant ML370 G3 Xeon 3.2GHz Tower Server[/url]
or...
http://usedservers.com.au/product_info.php/cPath/2/products_id/14
might even look at this for some storage if needed??? \[overkill for a home test environment??]
http://usedservers.com.au/product_info.php/cPath/11/products_id/29
Cheers
R.
Message was edited by:
ken.cline@hp.com to shorten the URL
about white boxes:
have a look here :
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=99237&tstart=25
or do some googling, you'll find plenty of sites/blogs on this topic
you can also search the forums, topic has been discussed lately
I setup my test lab using Proliant DL360 G2 servers. You might want to take a look at them. You should be able to get dual processor 2GB servers on Ebay for significantly less than the off-lease servers you are looking at and when you are done you can put them right back on Ebay. I was lucky enough to have access to a SAN for testing so I was able to do VMotion, HA, and DRS. You might want to look at setting up an iSCSI system so you can experiment with these as well.
rsa - thanks for the post.. the costings for a whitebox is in excess of 700 pounds, which is approx $1600AUD, that's way out of my price range.
I'm looking to spend no more than around $500 for a test box at home.
I just found this... this seems like a good little server to start off with.
Remember ,this is only for testing purposes for myself.
if the box isn't sufficient, I'll ebay it or use it for something else..
ompaq Proliant DL580 Quad Xeon 700MHz / 2048MB RAM[/url]
Message was edited by:
ken.cline@hp.com to shorten the URL
I'd love to be able to setup DRS or Vmotion at home, but I need SAN for that, and don't particularly want to be running a rack in my bedroom!
This 580 on ebay looks like a good buy.. (check out post reply to rsa)..
In addition, I'll probably look for a very low end desktop/tower box to act as the Virtual Centre Server. setup some sort of AD/security on it and then play around with the policies..
R.
You can do HA, DRS, and VMotion from a NFS server...so you don't have to buy a SAN just to experiment with those features at home.
I have 3 HP DL360's at home...and it all works great with VI3.
Chris
Just bought this for $80AUD.
That should suffice a test/lab for ESX 3?
Compaq Proliant DL580 Rack Mount Server
Quad Intel Xeon 700MHz Processors 1Mbyte Cache
2048 MB ECC Reg SDRAM
4x18.2GB Ultra SCSI
Compaq Integrated Smart Array Controller
Redundant PSU's
64 Bit Dual 10/100 NIC Card
I don't believe your raid controller is supported in VI3.
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_io_guide.pdf
I have just bought a dl380 g2 for £150 to use at home.
I really enjoy the HP DL360 G2's not only because they cost less than $400 on ebay...but the fact that they have built in iLO. I can power my servers on/off from anywhere in the world. Demonstrate remote ESX installs...etc.
I used to go for the Dell PowerEdge 1650's, but they make much more noise...and the DRAC cards are not even close in performance to the HP iLO cards...plus, they take up an extra PCI slot in the 1650's.
IBM's RSA cards, at least in the older generations, don't perform as well as HP's iLO cards either.
Now, if I were wanting to test out Virtual Iron, I would need to buy a much newer set of servers that support VT. I'm not prepared to do that yet...but as soon as I can make as good of a living with Virtual Iron as I do with VMware, I might consider upgrading my lab environment.
Chris
Remember Compaq was taken over by HP. The Smart Arrays are listed under HP Storage in the I/O guide.
Yep...if it uses the "cpqarray" driver, it won't work with VI-3. If it's a "cciss" based driver, you're good to go.
Alas the built in "Compaq Integrated Smart Array Controller " use the old "cpqarray" family driver, so it's not compatible with ESX 3
homever you'll find plenty of used smartarray 5302 or 5304 series which use the new driver type and are compatible with the DL580...
so only a few extra $$$ and you're set
The DL580 G2 had a 5i plus which is one of the cciss drivers.
yep but the "Quad Intel Xeon 700MHz Processor" is still DL 580 G1
I remember attaching a SAN to a DL580 with NT4.0 on it back in 1999. Now the only new HP hardware I see are blades!
VMWare is cool.
>Now the only new HP hardware I see are blades!
Consider yourself lucky to see/use bleeding edge hardware
I've yet to see my first blade running ESX, and I've seen too much DL580G1, G2, G3 G4