What to look for when purchasing a Server for ESXi

[Duke]

Weird, you can access those pages if you navigate through their site, but if you go directly to them it'll ask you to login.

 

Here's links that should work, if you click the 'Customise & Buy' link on those pages you'll go to where my original links went. Sorry about that.

 

R710

R610

R510

[DMcCoy]

I have some R710s running esx, very pleased with them. Get the drac if you get the dells. I have a new SAN based on HP server hardware (their P4300G2), performance is fine, software is fine, hardware is disapointing - very loud fans etc). I doubt I'd buy any HP servers again.

[mattx]

Thank you all so far for what you have given me in advice etc - will be spending quite a great of time next week now deciding on what to get - I'll do my usual of over specing it by a factor of x10 to the Bursar etc and ending up what I wanted to start with. Anyone else do that ?

[mattx]

Lordy, been playing around in the customize your dell part......not a good idea......

[Duke]

Lordy, been playing around in the customize your dell part......not a good idea......

 

Haha, been there many times... The spec I posted earlier is pretty spot-on for virtualisation (adjust RAM as needed), my actual quote included the DRAC as well. Don't deal with Dell directly for sales, PM me if you want a really good reseller.

[mattx]

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

 

Can you let me know what you are running on this setup ? How many VMs etc - would appreciate it.

[Duke]

It is unfortunately on the 'to buy' list rather than the 'already bought' list. We spent a very long time calculating server requirements and two of those host servers should virtualise the vast majority of the 22 physical servers on our network (DC's, ISA, WSUS, AV, print, SIMS... all the usual stuff for a big school). For now I'd be leaving the Exchange and SQL servers as physical until I saw how the SAN copes with IO requirements (should be fine), and I'd actually buy 3 R710's so I had failover.

[mattx]

We are on a much smaller scale !!

I'm looking to [ at the moment ] virtualize:

 

2 x 2003 servers DCs [ one just running as a DC and WSUS ] the other is our main Application Server

1 x 2003 member server which is just running Spiceworks and Junior Librarian

1 x ubuntu [ LAMP ] server which is running a MYSQL database of all our software and hardware

1 x 2003 server [ Not on Domain ] - running SQL server for the in house written MIS and Reports writing system

 

I installed and setup last summer our Hitachi SMS 100 SAN with the plans of using it for VMs in the future [ Server 2008 etc ] I am not sure if I will be virtualizing our current crop of kit or just moving straight to 2008 and Windows 7. Everything is still early planning but what I would like is to get the order in for the VM server now to avoid the VAT increase.