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I don't really have any suggestions for buying one, but if you live near a university I would make some inquiries. They're always throwing out 19" racks of various sizes at the U where I worked. I've got a few racks in reserve just because I claimed them when I found them on the loading dock.
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Oct 6, 2013 02:24
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I'm looking for a small, quiet, server to host a few VMs. My only requirememnts are that it can do 16GB RAM, have dual NICs, and that it's small as it'll be sitting on a shelf in a crowded half-height rack. Thought about building a whitebox but then I saw that the HP MicroServer can be had for about $500, is pretty small, and can be maxed out with a Xeon and 16GB ram if necessary. Anyone using one of these bad boys as an ESXi host? It would really only be running a few active directory related VMs, nothing groundbreaking. I know everyone loves to recommend whiteboxes but I'm not really sure I can do a significantly better job of assembling a small form factor server for under $500 (yes, over $500 if you factor in RAM, etc).
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Jan 12, 2014 17:56
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:Oh I misread your post, I know a few people running the microservers they perform directly relative the the HW you load it up with; the only real "gain" is you can download an esxi image from HP and get it with the custom/advanced drivers loaded, and you may have a bit better time as esxi progresses. Yeah I'm not entirely sold on the HP over a whitebox like you posted. It'll probably be over $6-700 after I load it up with RAM anyway. I built a Nexenta SAN so I'll likely just be booting ESXi off of a USB drive so I don't really need any extra drives. The main draw to the HP was the fact that it's just built and I can run poo poo out of box. I guess I'm getting older and lazier but I'm leaning more towards prebuilt machines these days and don't really enjoy getting my hands into the guts of the hardware. Probably comes from working on vendor machines so much where if something goes wrong you just replace it. Bad habit but I can't say that just unboxing the HP and getting ESXi from the vendor isn't really appealing 
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Jan 13, 2014 04:30
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:Aside from ZFS what's your reason for choosing nexenta? I'm just curious. Old timey Solaris admin so I wanted to check out the new school Solaris spinoff stuff, but it honestly doesn't really matter. I could replace it with FreeNAS or OpenFiler tomorrow for as much "work" as I put into it so far.
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Jan 13, 2014 13:02
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I got a Xyplex Maxserver 1620 off ebay for a hundred or so and it was pretty awesome, but I wouldn't really characterise the setup as "simple". Once I got everything working though it was as simple as "telnet maxserver ##" to get to whatever device I wanted. That was pretty awesome.
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Jan 21, 2014 22:25
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While we're on the subject of serial comms: Hello, someone please recommend me a USB->Serial adapter that works under Windows 8.1. All the generic PL2032 based dongles are based on EOL chips that Prolific stopped supporting in their new 8.1 drivers. I installed old Vista drivers which made the PL2032 work but it bluescreens my Win8.1 laptop on a regular basis so I'd rather just spend a few dollaroos and buy something that works out of the box.
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Jan 21, 2014 22:29
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Es bueno, merci!
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Jan 22, 2014 01:59
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phosdex posted:I'm building a little home esxi server and have everything ordered but one last item. USB flash drive for booting off of. Are there any particular ones that are more reliable for this use? I'll buy a couple for backup, but right now I'm thinking Crucial because they are more likely to have built it start to end? Alternate (Not-so) comedy option: Get familiar with vSphere Auto-deploy and skip the USB drive altogether  Of course you'll need more hardware to take its place, but it's much more fun 
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Feb 4, 2014 04:55
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What is the current zeitgeist regarding AMD vs Intel ESXi whiteboxes? I decided that much as I love simming ESXi and my various projects on my desktop, I'd like to move that all to its own resources. Was thinking about something like the following: AMD FX-8320 ~$150 ASUS M5A78L-M ~$70 16GB Crucial DDR3 1333 ~$150 I've got things like the Case covreed. Mainly interested in the working bits. Storage would be iSCSI so I'm not concerned about storage. I'll probably be booting this off of USB anyway. Just wondering what the Intel equivalent would be. Of course if there is some good reason why this combo would be a bad fit I'm all ears too.
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Feb 23, 2014 23:16
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What do you guys think about these little machines for a Virtualization base? http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRi-2558F.cfm Price for this would be pretty equivalent to an AMD FX 8320 + mobo, and this comes with 4 gig NICs (that you have to patch VIBs into ESXi ISO for, unfortunately) edit: Oh ehh, they require ECC ram. Nevermind. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Mar 7, 2014 |
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Mar 7, 2014 22:13
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e: nvm
some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Mar 21, 2014 |
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Mar 21, 2014 17:59
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:If you run out of ram let me know I have a few tricks up my sleeve! You know, the rest of us call this "shoplifting" 
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Apr 10, 2014 03:38
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So I've been hemming and hawing about building this vmlab server for the past month and change. I've heard bad things about AMD FX chips (not in this thread, granted, especially since we talked about this FX8320 situation a few pages back) but honestly I can't tell how much of this is just people's preference for intel because on paper it seems like the AMD will run about the same as an i5 but has more cores and is cheaper. There's also the fact that AMD FX chips have a higher TDP than the rough equivalent i5, but I'm not sure how much a 130W vs 95W TDP CPU will reflect in electrical costs in reality. I mean right now I'm running an i7 920 which is like a 130W TDP which is on 24/7 (though minimal workload most of the day) and I haven't really cried at my electric bill or anything. There's an FX8300 which is 95W but you can literally not buy it in north america it seems. I'm a little weary of going to eBay for a CPU. So I don't know. Everyone is saying stick to Intel but I'm on a budget and in the meantime I've spent a month not simming poo poo because I've been obsessively checking prices on intel vs AMD stuff, etc. I think I'm just going to buy the 8320 with a decent mobo and 16 gigs of ram and just loving start using it rather than spend my time browsing forums reading about wattage and electric costs and AMD vs Intel slapfights.
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Apr 11, 2014 00:31
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evol262 posted:Honestly, it depends on what you're doing. Is CPU performance important to you? More important than price and density? Buy Intel. But it's virt. And core for core, AMD is about 25% cheaper even taking in the cost of motherboards and such, plus they tend to have better support for nested virt, PCI passthrough, etc. It's hard to say whether CPU performance is important. I'll be doing things like working with AD, Exchange, VoiP, compiling, etc. It's kind of a mix of CPU intensive and not. Likely the 8320 should be fine. I'm fairly sure that my iSCSI NAS will be a higher limiting factor than the CPU itself. I'm thinking about throwing a few drives in the machine instead, but I already own the NAS so I'll probably start working with that, and if it becomes a huge pain I'll just migrate to a local datastore.
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Apr 11, 2014 02:18
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If you just have one ESXi host then make sure all your guests are using the same vSwitch and are on the same subnet. If you can't ping between guests then you've got a networking setup issue; no advanced switches/etc are required.
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Apr 27, 2014 00:43
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Can someone recommend a budget dual PCIe gig NIC that is either supported by ESXi 5.5+ or has a VIB that can be easily added in? Technically PCI would be fine too, but that would mean I have to relocate my internal USB drive 
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May 4, 2014 02:51
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Rescued a handful of 300GB SAS 10k 2.5" drives from a server that was heavily upgraded recently. Anyone have any leads on a cheap SAS controller that has ESXi VIBs? I'm hoping for under a hundred bucks but I dunno if that's feasible.
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May 22, 2014 15:50
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Yeah, I haven't even really checked the specs and I'm going from a 1xGBNic iSCSI setup so a single 7200RPM laptop drive would probably be faster than what I'm using now.
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May 22, 2014 20:51
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:vCenter 5.x will run fine on 4GB of ram IF you install JRE6u45-JRE6-25 vCenter or VCSA? Also is there a howto for this?
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May 26, 2014 03:11
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OK let's all pretend this isn't a weird question: Has anyone had much experience with Hercules (the IBM z-Series platform emulator)? I'd love to ping a few questions off anyone if they have the time. Want to get it up and running in a Lab environment for reasons but I'm so green when it comes to this platform. Herc-390 project has a pretty good install document and it's pretty thorough, but I'd love some real-world examples.
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Jun 28, 2014 21:24
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Should be no real issues using a Dell PERC 6i (specifically T774H) in a regular PC with ESXi 5.5U1, right? I can't imagine why there would be issues but I figured I'd check before I pulled the trigger. Have four 2TB drives that I want to throw into a RAID10, since these are going for $50 on eBay figured it would be a good solution.
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Jul 19, 2014 16:42
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Anyone here run ArcSight ESM in a lab setting? Just wanted to bounce a few questions off 'ya if you do.
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Dec 20, 2014 18:36
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Let's go with the more hardware side of things: Anyone know where I can get four 20U or less square hole rack supports? I'm building a nice wooden enclosed rack that I'm going to put in my den which will fit in with some furniture. I've got the wood and plans picked out, but I'm having trouble sourcing the actual rails. I don't really need it to be 20U but if I buy 20U i have room to grow/shrink my design.
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Feb 3, 2015 20:07
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evol262 posted:Your local metal shop. Honestly. They've got angles that will pass as round holes, such as that of a telco rack, but nothing in the square hole area :[
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Feb 4, 2015 00:14
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Thanks  Didn't know if there was a better option than eBay which is why I asked. Though when it comes down to it I'll likely end up on eBay anyway 
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Feb 4, 2015 01:11
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Yeah you know what, gently caress cross border buying. I bought four square hole 20U rails and it came to $150-something Canadian after outrageous UPS shipping to Canada. Now UPS shows up and there's a $56 brokerage fee. Could literally have bought a pre-made rack locally for $200 and nailed some nice hardwood to it, at this rate.
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Mar 10, 2015 00:58
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Wow. Haven't picked up the package yet (was at work) so I'm going to go ahead and do this tomorrow. Thanks!
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Mar 10, 2015 02:30
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I'll pass on the memory thing because I'm not familiar with the TS440, however I WILL say that my Dell R710 has a mish-mash of 50-something GB in an unmatched pattern and while I know this incurs a performance hit I can't say that I've really felt it on any of my VMs, and some of them are memory hungry. 240 isn't really going go be a lot for VMs unless you spin up with the bare disk requirements. If the drive was a 7200 I'd say that you would be OK leaving the DC and things on there, but since it's 5400 that's kind of going to kill you. Does the TS440 have a RAID card? If so you might want to maybe invest in a few smaller 7200RPM disks in a non-mirror RAID. I've got four 2TB 7200s in a RAID-6 and I'm planning to add an SSD as a flash cache to improve the speed, though IMHO it doesn't need any improving for everything I do with it.
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Apr 5, 2015 15:14
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That's not awful, but as someone with CCNA and CCNP under his belt I still don't see the value of real hardware versus GNS3. I know everyone wants to get their hands on real kit because it feels cool and you never know when you might need to know how to, I don't know, make a rollover cable or something, but if I had it to do all over again I would never have touched physical equipment (well, except for one router to get an IOS from  )..The convenience of being able to fire up a dozen routers with the click of a button and not have to sit there next to a jet engine endlessly flipping console cables back and forth is so much preferable to owning some old Cisco kit. To me, anyway. edit: That sounded way harsher than I intended, and by no means did I mean to put you off your purchase. If I could recommend one thing, pull an IOS off your router and fire up GNS3 and donk around with it
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Jan 25, 2016 23:56
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InevitableCheese posted:Yeah, I will probably end up doing both hardware and virtual. I had such a bad time trying to get "other images" working that I ended up buying a rack of stuff. Plus, I don't really have any experiences with actual hardware so I'd rather get that out of the way at home. Yeah, that's how I was when I first started too so I definitely understand the desire to just get your hands on kit Good luck!
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Jan 26, 2016 18:17
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Swagger Dagger posted:If all I want to do is get a lab to run ESXi with a bunch of VMs, could I make do with a T140 with an i3 and 32 gigs of ram? I would strongly suggest not going with an i3 for lack of core resource availability.
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Jan 31, 2016 01:18
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I'm like 99.999% sure you can do STP in a switchport-enabled IOS image in GNS3 But your point stands.
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Feb 4, 2016 23:48
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I think everyone WANTS a lab just because it looks boss, but the reality is that everything you will need you can do cheaper and more efficiently with GNS3 and one or two IOS images. And I don't mean to be derogatory when I say that. I was the exact same way. Someone told me to use PacketTracer but I spent big bucks on switches, routers, terminal servers, etc. In the end I sold it all for a loss. I won't say I didn't get use out of it. I did. It was a good learning experience, but in hindsight I would not have invested that money again.
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May 11, 2016 16:57
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Make sure you adhere to all corporate information security policies if you go this route. They can be far-reaching and just putting something on a segregated subnet may not be enough to put your org out of compliance of certifications/standards or policies. To be fair, I don't think anyone said "just do it without telling it anyone" but when you get permission make sure you get it in writing and be expressly clear about what your intended use of the lab will be. That way if you get audited you can at least CYA. Just my two cents as someone who writes corporate policies to prevent exactly what you guys are talking about 
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May 12, 2016 22:35
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