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This is a quick one really but here's the deal..

 

I currently have an ASUS machine with a Highpoint RAID card in it, acting as a Win2k3 server whilst housing two additional VMware Win2k3x64 guest OS's and I'd like to move to something a bit more purpose built and start making use of 64bit memory, etc... I'd stay where I am with it but it is getting a bit long in the tooth and less reliable so it's time to look ahead.

 

I already have some new-ish hard drives as well as some very nice DDR2 Ram sitting around spare so can anyone suggest a reasonable spec server unit to do the job. Budget is around the £250 - £300 mark.

 

 

Ultimately the plan is to move everything on to an ESXi 4 system so that even the main 2k3 server is a guest OS and then get it all moved to guest win2k8 OS's once I've figured out when the schools will be able to consider it.

 

Recommendations, etc... would be very welcome...

 

Oh and this is for my own use at home, not for a school btw so no LOUD wind tunnel machines :)

Duke

Duke

Posted
Posted

Just bear in mind when you move to ESX4 there's a limited hardware compatibility list so you'd likely run into issues with a home-built machine unless you're careful what RAID and network cards you use. :)

 

For the current one are you looking to build the whole thing from scratch or maybe buy a Dell workstation/desktop and add in the RAM and HDDs? As far as spec goes it depends how much load you're putting on it and what you're doing with it. ;)

 

Chris

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contink

contink

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Just bear in mind when you move to ESX4 there's a limited hardware compatibility list so you'd likely run into issues with a home-built machine unless you're careful what RAID and network cards you use. :)

That was probably why I had a little twitch in the old gut feeling so thanks for the tip :)

 

For the current one are you looking to build the whole thing from scratch or maybe buy a Dell workstation/desktop and add in the RAM and HDDs? As far as spec goes it depends how much load you're putting on it and what you're doing with it. ;)

Well, at present I'm using it for:

  • Small network DC (6 PC's max)
  • Exchange server (on one of VMs) for 2 users
  • DNS, DHCP, print server, file server (again 2 users)
  • WDS/RIS/etc... image testing
  • App repackaging and testing using guest XP OS images
  • Archive for backups, etc...

There's no real plans to expand that out to more users or try to do anything clever like host a web site through it, etc... it's really just my means of testing and expanding on my skills base while handling the general admin of running my business.

Guest Guest

Guest Guest

Posted
Posted (edited)

I like the little Dell and HPs that go on offer every so often. Although people mention hardware compatibility i personally have always been fine (that was ESXi3 and Citrix Xen though).

You'll get a quad core xeon/opteron base system for £175ish, + £40 ram, + 2x 1tb HD @ £55each = A pretty high spec home server for just over £300.

 

Have a look at Citrix Xen btw. I havnnt used ESX4 but it is certainly better than ESXi3.

Edited by Guest
Duke

Duke

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I like the little Dell and HPs that go on offer every so often. Although people mention hardware compatibility i personally have always been fine (that was ESXi3 and Citrix Xen though).

 

If you want something low-hassle and with a warranty then this is a good idea. I've been running Xen and ESX4 on some Dell Optiplex 760s, and the only thing that needed changing on them was the network card. Xen would take some old 100Mb network cards I had lying around but I had to buy some Intel Pro 1000's for ESX (the internal card is an Intel one but was too new to be supported). The disks weren't recognised under ESX3.5 but were fine in 4.0.

 

If it was going free virtualisation then I'd choose Xen, but if I was paying for it then I've found the development, features and community behind VMware make it worthwhile. I'll probably be going ESX4/vSphere for 20-odd servers next summer.

 

Cheers,

Chris

contink

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If you want something low-hassle and with a warranty then this is a good idea. I've been running Xen and ESX4 on some Dell Optiplex 760s, and the only thing that needed changing on them was the network card. Xen would take some old 100Mb network cards I had lying around but I had to buy some Intel Pro 1000's for ESX (the internal card is an Intel one but was too new to be supported). The disks weren't recognised under ESX3.5 but were fine in 4.0.

I'll be honest, I've never looked at Xen and if I'm even more honest I don't want to spend time learning yet another system when I'm already pretty comfortable with VMWare (although I've not actually installed ESX4 either). I have a new Intel PCI nic here and definitialy want a 1Gb connection for the backup transfers so I can afford "little" things like that if needs be ;)

 

If it was going free virtualisation then I'd choose Xen, but if I was paying for it then I've found the development, features and community behind VMware make it worthwhile. I'll probably be going ESX4/vSphere for 20-odd servers next summer.

This makes me wonder if I'm missing something regarding VMWare and paying... I was under the impression that the ESX4 was freely available (without direct support I'm guessing). Am I wrong there?

ServersPlus

ServersPlus

Posted
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This makes me wonder if I'm missing something regarding VMWare and paying... I was under the impression that the ESX4 was freely available (without direct support I'm guessing). Am I wrong there?

 

ESXi is free, ESX isn't. It's confusing!

contink

contink

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@James: Yeah... that offer in my inbox was what sparked this whole thing and it does seem reasonably good. I'm kicking the tyres somewhat to see if it's the best idea for my plan. Can you tell me what the RAM configuration is in those and whether I can use more than just 4Gb of RAM in that unit?

 

 

@ahuxham: Looks nice but the lack of HD space would drop it from the running because of the requirement to house my RIS/WDS and archive system backups for non-school clients.

 

 

@James (again): Thanks for the clarification :)

Duke

Duke

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This makes me wonder if I'm missing something regarding VMWare and paying... I was under the impression that the ESX4 was freely available (without direct support I'm guessing). Am I wrong there?

 

ESXi is free, ESX isn't. It's confusing!

 

Exactly, ESXi is the embedded version that's freely available. ESX has more enterprise-level features and is designed for when you're running quite a few hosts and need to manage them all together. I'll need about four physical hosts for all my VMs and want stuff like HA and FT so will be going with ESX. I actually found 4.0 to be a lot nicer to install and get running with my hardware than 3.0 or 3.5.

 

Make sure whatever hardware you buy will let you fit plenty of RAM as you'll need it if your VM requirements grow. I'm crossing my fingers that 48GB will be in my price range next year. :D

 

Cheers,

Chris

ahuxham

ahuxham

Posted
Posted
@James: Yeah... that offer in my inbox was what sparked this whole thing and it does seem reasonably good. I'm kicking the tyres somewhat to see if it's the best idea for my plan. Can you tell me what the RAM configuration is in those and whether I can use more than just 4Gb of RAM in that unit?

 

Memory

PC2-6400 unbuffered DDR2 SDRAM (800MHz)

Standard memory

4 GB (2 x 2 GB) Upgraded Memory (1gb standard)

Processor front side bus

800 MHz Front Side Bus

Maximum memory

8 GB

Memory slots

4 DIMM slots

Theblacksheep

Theblacksheep

Posted
Posted
Exactly, ESXi is the embedded version that's freely available. ESX has more enterprise-level features and is designed for when you're running quite a few hosts and need to manage them all together. I'll need about four physical hosts for all my VMs and want stuff like HA and FT so will be going with ESX. I actually found 4.0 to be a lot nicer to install and get running with my hardware than 3.0 or 3.5.

 

To make matter more confusing.... you dont need ESX for HA and FT or the other enterprise features you just need the licences that come with ESX. Allocate to licences to ESXi and it'll act like an ESX server. Management wise they are also the same, its the licences that count.

 

The main reason for ESX over ESXi is the full fat service console (locked out in ESXi) that you can do quite alot with.

 

 

ESX4 rocks. I want one for home as the old RM xeon server I have for ESX3.5 takes about 20 mins to boot up.

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contink

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To make matter more confusing....

Explained perfectly thanks.. :)

 

The main reason for ESX over ESXi is the full fat service console (locked out in ESXi) that you can do quite alot with.

Is the VMWare Go an equivalent for basic use though? Essentially I'd want the same functionality as I get with VMWare Server Console at the moment (I'm still using VMWare 1.0.7)... Nothing fancy, but certainly I'd want to actually access the Guest OS's

 

ESX4 rocks. I want one for home as the old RM xeon server I have for ESX3.5 takes about 20 mins to boot up.

ESX4i? :)

 

 

Ok... confusion starting to creep in :D

ServersPlus

ServersPlus

Posted
Posted
@James: Yeah... that offer in my inbox was what sparked this whole thing and it does seem reasonably good. I'm kicking the tyres somewhat to see if it's the best idea for my plan. Can you tell me what the RAM configuration is in those and whether I can use more than just 4Gb of RAM in that unit?

 

It's a 2 x 2GB kit in this bundle - it has 4 memory slots though so you can put a 2GB dimm in each one. It takes Unbuffered non-ECC memory as it's an entry-level tower server.

PiqueABoo

PiqueABoo

Posted
Posted
I'm crossing my fingers that 48GB will be in my price range next year

 

You need that? I thought one of the religious HV vs. ESX points was that ESX overcomitted RAM i.e. allocates what a VM is actually using, not say the 4GB it thinks it has.

Duke

Duke

Posted
Posted
You need that? I thought one of the religious HV vs. ESX points was that ESX overcomitted RAM i.e. allocates what a VM is actually using, not say the 4GB it thinks it has.

 

Need it? Probably not right now, but I'm virtualising around 20 servers plus I'll want development machines, and also room to run another virtual network side-by-side for when we switch over to a new server OS so that everything is ready to go. ESX does apparently handle the overcommitting well, but if you could afford 48GB RAM wouldn't you be tempted to cover yourself in the future...? ;)

 

Chris

Guest Guest

Guest Guest

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Posted (edited)
I'll be honest, I've never looked at Xen and if I'm even more honest I don't want to spend time learning yet another system when I'm already pretty comfortable with VMWare (although I've not actually installed ESX4 either). I have a new Intel PCI nic here and definitialy want a 1Gb connection for the backup transfers so I can afford "little" things like that if needs be ;)

 

I cant comment on ESXi4 as we moved to xen befoer it came out, but ime Xen is alot more complete in terms of easy access to the bits you need; console, backups, live migration, snapshots, scripting, and a great GUI to manage it all. As ESXi is missing its console you are extreamly limited in what backup options you have, i always felt like my hands were tied... (this may not be true of v4)

 

Until 6 months ago i hadnt touched Citrix Xen. Now we have a fully home grown openfiler iSCSI san - citrix xen environment. That 6 months includes trialing, learning, implimenting and testing, and probably 4 of those months were spent on Openfiler rather than Xen.

 

 

Persoanally i wouldnt dismiss it out of hand because you dont know it, aslong as you click a mouse on the really simple GUI there really is nothing to learn (not at the home user level anyway)

Edited by Guest
Theblacksheep

Theblacksheep

Posted
Posted (edited)
Explained perfectly thanks.. :)

 

Is the VMWare Go an equivalent for basic use though? Essentially I'd want the same functionality as I get with VMWare Server Console at the moment (I'm still using VMWare 1.0.7)... Nothing fancy, but certainly I'd want to actually access the Guest OS's

 

ESX4i? :)

 

 

Ok... confusion starting to creep in :D

 

You can manage it fine with the vSphere client (infact you get FULL esx use for 60 days), you connect directly to the HOST with the vSphere client. You dont need GO for this. GO comes in usefull (i've not seen it yet) when you have multiple ESXi servers.... without GO you'd have to connect to each host seperatly using the vSphere client.

 

For your ref, and perhaps it'll clear things up... With proper ESX you also need a management server (windows with SQL and a seperate DC (both can be VMs running on the system)) called vCenter. This is a single point of contact (for vSphere clients) that you add your ESX hosts too. vCenter does all the work in a production environment controlling licencing, vmotions etc etc. vCenter is pretty expensive, but under 3 hosts and you get get a 'foundation' licence that is about 1k.

 

Look up the 'ghetto' scripts for ESXi... you can do some stuff Xen offers for free where MS/VMware charge. Not sure you need migrations for 1 server tho.

Edited by Theblacksheep
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You can manage it fine with the vSphere client (infact you get FULL esx use for 60 days), you connect directly to the HOST with the vSphere client. You dont need GO for this. GO comes in usefull (i've not seen it yet) when you have multiple ESXi servers....

ah... ok... so to bring this back to bare basics... the vSphere client is what used to be the VMWare server console and so long as I'm only using a single host that will suffice... QED: No drama or extra's required.

 

Most of the stuff re: ESX, management, licenses, cost, etc.. kicks in when you're dealing with multiple hosts and trying to juggle it all... Sort of the KVM switch of the VMWare world... Ok that makes a lot more sense... :)

 

Look up the 'ghetto' scripts for ESXi... you can do some stuff Xen offers for free where MS/VMware charge. Not sure you need migrations for 1 server tho.

Well that was my next thought, ie: migrating a VMWare to a Xen... I'll have the old server (once I transfer it all off) to play with anyway so I may just stick Xen on that when there's more time.. Doesn't hurt to have another skillset or experience... There's just so little time!

Theblacksheep

Theblacksheep

Posted
Posted
ah... ok... so to bring this back to bare basics... the vSphere client is what used to be the VMWare server console and so long as I'm only using a single host that will suffice... QED: No drama or extra's required.

 

Most of the stuff re: ESX, management, licenses, cost, etc.. kicks in when you're dealing with multiple hosts and trying to juggle it all... Sort of the KVM switch of the VMWare world... Ok that makes a lot more sense... :)

 

 

Well that was my next thought, ie: migrating a VMWare to a Xen... I'll have the old server (once I transfer it all off) to play with anyway so I may just stick Xen on that when there's more time.. Doesn't hurt to have another skillset or experience... There's just so little time!

 

You can also enable a web brower in esxi and use it like vmware server... but I much prefer the client.

 

My plan was simelar, but finding time for xen seems impossible at the moment.... and the teachers are back tomorrow... noooooooooooooooo

DMcCoy

DMcCoy

Posted
Posted
Exactly, ESXi is the embedded version that's freely available. ESX has more enterprise-level features and is designed for when you're running quite a few hosts and need to manage them all together. I'll need about four physical hosts for all my VMs and want stuff like HA and FT so will be going with ESX. I actually found 4.0 to be a lot nicer to install and get running with my hardware than 3.0 or 3.5.

 

Make sure whatever hardware you buy will let you fit plenty of RAM as you'll need it if your VM requirements grow. I'm crossing my fingers that 48GB will be in my price range next year. :D

 

Cheers,

Chris

 

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

 

ESXi IS ESX without the Linux Console VM. ESXi also happens to have a free version that lacks many features that are common to both ESX and ESXi when *licensed* (them having virtually identical features).

 

The minor differences:

ESX can provide guest access to COM/USB ports

ESXi can be run from USB/Embedded

 

Both have the same level of managability when used with vCenter.

 

Oh, and for testing I do recommend the ML115, I have one here for ESXi - cheap and mostly works with ESXi/Xen/Hyper-V

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Duke

Duke

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ESXi IS ESX without the Linux Console VM. ESXi also happens to have a free version that lacks many features that are common to both ESX and ESXi when *licensed* (them having virtually identical features).

 

That is a bit odd... I suppose it makes for an easy upgrade route as if you decide you need the features then you just buy a licence.

 

VMware's website isn't exactly clear on which version you're likely to end up using:

 

VMware ESXi is the easiest way to get started with virtualization—and it’s free.

 

However the VI3 page says:

 

Customers (of the paid-for version) can choose to deploy either VMware ESX or VMware ESXi.

 

Lets add vSphere and Clouds into the mix just to confuse everyone! :whistle:

 

DMcCoy - Thanks for clarifying, my mistake! :)

  • 3 months later...
contink

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Finally got myself organised and got one ordered... Had a horrible scare with my old server system and main PC that left me looking at a complete reinstall scenario with newborn baby screaming, etc... in background.

 

Me thinks £258 is a small price to pay for a bit of pro-active work... Now just got to update my MS Partner subscription..

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