What to look for when purchasing a Server for ESXi

[mattx]

Looking at maybe beating the VAT increase and ordering a server now. I am not sure how to approach this in regards to either getting some huge HDs and installing a RAID5 and then building OS's on those or connecting ESXi to our iSCSI SAN I installed over the summer which is a hitachi sms 100.

Also does anyone have any feed back in regards to installing ESXi or having it already in built to the server.

Please chuck some suggestions and idea in my direction in regards to spec.

I'm looking to either install server 2008 [ a few ] or migrate our current setup which is 5 2003 servers - nothing really CPU extensive.

[Ric_]

You don't really want your storage in the host for virtualisation as it prevents you adding additional servers in the future and easily moving VMs between them.

 

You want lots of fast processing cores and lots of RAM. I opted for XenServer over ESX because the licensing worked out better for the quad-processor boxes I got.

[mattx]

You don't really want your storage in the host for virtualisation as it prevents you adding additional servers in the future and easily moving VMs between them.

 

You want lots of fast processing cores and lots of RAM. I opted for XenServer over ESX because the licensing worked out better for the quad-processor boxes I got.

 

Can you let me know what you have [ specs etc ] - would appreciate it. I was not sure if there would be a impact in regards to performance when using the SAN for both VMs and storage. Plus I have already used two of the dedicated ports from the SAN.

[Domino]

ESXi runs fine off an SD card FYI, done it on our last few bladecentre installs and its great. Good way of knocking some cost off the hosts.

 

As for whether to get it preinstalled/builtin or install yourself -as long as the hardware's supported the install process takes minutes, so whatever's most cost-effective I'd go for

[Duke]

Lots of RAM, lots of NICs, decent CPUs specced to your processing requirements, no internal HDDs, SD card for ESXi, VM storage on a SAN/NAS.

 

DELL R710

2x L5520 @ 2.26GHZ/8MB

48GB DDR3 (12X4GB) 1066MHZ

DUAL GIG ENET/4PORT

NO CONTROLLER, DRIVES OR OS

INTERNAL 1GB SD

INTEL GIGABIT ET QUAD PCI-E CARD

2x HIGH OUTPUT REDUNDANT PSU 870W

SLIDING READY RAILS W/OUT ARM

3YR SUPPORT

 

Always check the VMware HCL before buying.

 

Chris

[3s-gtech]

Bought an HP DL380 G4 for this job, was end of line and very keenly priced. Opteron Quad-Core, if you're going ESXi and free it's only licenced for one processor socket so get as many cores as possible! I went for internal storage for the VMs due to budget, bought a set of 146GB disks for RAID5. ESXi running from an 8GB good quality memory stick inside (very little I/O I believe). Good machine, currently has 12GB RAM and three VMs in it, plenty of room for more.

[mattx]

What sort of sized LUNS do you suggest for VMs ? [ I have created 2 so for both 1TB each for data ] and can you share a LUN and have more than one VM running off that LUN ?

[PeteHopton]

Hi Guys,

 

If you're looking it intel, the buy the 5600 series Xeons,

AMD have a very cost effective offering with the 6100 series 8 and 12 core opteron processors.

 

Either connect to a Storage device (eg. such as an EcoVault or another iscsi system) and load the base OS onto an SSD in the host server or

use a decent LSI hardware RAID card in the server node.

 

All virtualisation produces a lot of I/O operations per second, which means a large number of disks, or a suitable cached storage device are key to good performance.

 

Having a common storage device allows you to migrate VM's from server to server.

 

Look into HyperV on Server 2008 R2 as its cheap for education and comes with loads of features. Using something like Starwind HA Enterprise on some dedicated hardware (it's better value if you use their hardware providers) and a pair of servers with some cheap education server 2008 R2 Enterprise licenses lets you do a whole High Availability clustered offering, meaning any one server can fail and the VM's all keep going - very handy!

[Domino]

What sort of sized LUNS do you suggest for VMs ? [ I have created 2 so for both 1TB each for data ] and can you share a LUN and have more than one VM running off that LUN ?

 

VMware esx 3.5 originally only supported 2TB LUNS VMware KB: ESX does not support 2 terabyte LUN sizes

 

I believe this is different in Vsphere 4, but TBH have never had cause to create a server with more than 2TB on a single disk, so we've not tested.

 

and yes you can apply more than one server to a LUN and have them accessing individual disk images

[PeteHopton]

I'd personally thin provision, so I don't have to worry. LUN size won't really afflict performance, Providing you've got you RAID set up right, block size good and everything aligned with the disk sectors, then job is a good 'un.

[Hightower]

You generally just need to spec the server for the jobs you need. People are saying lots of RAM, but if you're hosting two servers why do you NEED 64gb RAM? It's a variable and is completely dependant on the jobs you require.

 

We bought a G6 - it came with a built in SD card with ESXi on it, so the HDD's are purely for storage of VMs.

 

I wouldn't even recommend investing in a SAN setup. If you have scope for one ESXi server then get local storage. If you increase the amount of ESXi servers in the future you can invest in the SAN then and move your local storage accross to it. Buying a SAN for one server to me seems a bit like buying a bakers to feed a budgie.

[FN-GM]

Have i missed some here. I thought schools didn't pay VAT?

[PeteHopton]

Agree on the SAN to one server point, although my thoughts were around 2 servers and a Starwind SAN for full failover functionality, maybe a step up from what's looking to be achieved.

[PeteHopton]

@FN-GM, Universities pay VAT and can't reclaim it, so I guess same goes for Colleges and Schools?

[mattx]

Have i missed some here. I thought schools didn't pay VAT?

 

Private school - we pay VAT I'm afraid.

[mattx]

You generally just need to spec the server for the jobs you need. People are saying lots of RAM, but if you're hosting two servers why do you NEED 64gb RAM? It's a variable and is completely dependant on the jobs you require.

 

We bought a G6 - it came with a built in SD card with ESXi on it, so the HDD's are purely for storage of VMs.

 

I wouldn't even recommend investing in a SAN setup. If you have scope for one ESXi server then get local storage. If you increase the amount of ESXi servers in the future you can invest in the SAN then and move your local storage accross to it. Buying a SAN for one server to me seems a bit like buying a bakers to feed a budgie.

 

We already have the SAN so was thinking of using it - it's a Hitachi SMS 100. How much did you pay for your G6 if you don't mind me asking.

[Hightower]

How much did you pay for your G6 if you don't mind me asking.

 

Not really sure now off the top of my head. £3500 rings a bell (but could be wrong!). That was with 6 x 72gb 15000rpm disks, 32GB RAM, SD card with ESXi image, 2 x Xeons (of some sort - cant remember off top of head) and the usual bumf of redundant PSU and 4 x NICs etc.

 

Agree on the SAN to one server point, although my thoughts were around 2 servers and a Starwind SAN for full failover functionality, maybe a step up from what's looking to be achieved.

 

For full failover? You'd need a lot more kit than that, starting with an additional SAN, ESX licences, servers/sans distributed in different locations with multiple links - for full failover the list is endless, and the bill is even longer

[Domino]

for full failover the list is endless, and the bill is even longer

 

I can testify to that....

[john]

I use XenServer on HP Proliant DL360 G6s, they are Dual Quad Core Xeons (2.4Ghz), 24GB Ram in each, have 4x 10/100/1000 NICs, mirrored SAS HDDs for the Citrix OS and they are connected to my Sun 7110 SAN, this SAN has been running everything on my network in its entirity, all my storage needs are on it (eggs in one basket!).

 

My SAN has:

Roaming Profiles for around 560 users

Home Areas for the above users

2 years of Media Studies work (they live encode over the LAN via the SAN and it works! bit slow when you get more than 12 doing it at once now though)

Shared Areas

Finance Program Files

School Image Library

All the VMs VHDs

ISO Library for the VMs

 

All that is running off it and its great. We have just got an Oracle 7120 to go with it (as we have used nearly half the space on the 7110 now and its non-expandable) so will be having a shuffle round of those items over Christmas, so we will then aim to have just the VMs and the Media Studies on the 7110 to hopefully improve the number we can have streaming and encoding from it to the class size of 20. The rest of the data will move onto the new 7120 unit.

 

This has been in-place since this summer just gone and its been a great setup, had its teething issues to start with and still a few bugs (Windows 7 printing grrrr!) but its been a great setup and if we didn't do the Media Studies that way I don't think we would have noticed the slight slow downs we do on performance.

[glennda]

I currently run around 10 vm's (8 production) using KVM on ubuntu running off an HP DL380 G5 dual quad core with 64gb ram although only 30 ish gb used (extra for running vm's from same spec seperate host in case of failure)

 

uses a HP FC MSA2000

 

host runs a dream and is quicker then esx!

[Domino]

host runs a dream and is quicker then esx!

 

citation needed..

 

why do you say that?

[mattx]

Is it me or am I going around in circles on the HP site looking for specs and prices of their kit ?

All I want is a list of servers they have in regards to virtualization management etc.....

 

Balls to them - I'll look at the IBM site instead.

 

Found stuff on the IBM site quite quickly:

 

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/hardware/rack/

Edited December 3, 2010 by mattx

[glennda]

citation needed..

 

why do you say that?

 

Google KVM quicker then ESX there are a few different articles out there which have compared them - KVM is less resource intensive and can run 5 vm's to 3 on esx.

 

Also the added bonus i you can then use the host for other things if they are non mission critical things (although i wouldnt)

[Duke]

Balls to them - I'll look at the IBM site instead.

 

I'd look at Dell first.

 

R710

R610

R510

 

Chris

[mattx]

I'd look at Dell first.

 

R710

R610

R510

 

Chris

 

Asking me to login - never mind.