Hardware to Build a new VMware ESX server

Hello,

I was referred to this site by Chad S. and he informed me thatthis site would be a great resource for my question.

I am looking to build a ESX server for arount $450 + or -. My goal is to have approximately 12 VM’s running

- 2 Networker servers (clustered)

- 1 HomeBase server

- 1 Netbackup Server

- 1 DPA server

- 1 Avamar virtual edition server

- 1 Celerra Emulation server

- 2 Windows clients

- 1 Solaris x86 client

- 1 Redhat client

What hardware would you believe will be appropriate in order for this setup to run efficiently? I have reviewed http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2008/06/building-a-home.html but much of the hardware listed is no longer available. My primary interest are in a Motherboard that can handle 12GB of memory. If 12GB of memory is overkill for the config above then I am all ears to a MB that has 8GB as well. Therefore recommendations on a MB and processor would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks for anything you can offer me in advance

Responses(1)

Simon_Seagrave_

6 Posts

0

January 10th, 2011 13:00

Hi Gary,

It certainly sounds like a nice lab server you're looking at building. I am working on the assumption that you'd want all of the eleven VMs you mentioned running at the same time.

The first thing you should look at when going to build a VMware vSphere white box server is compatibility. VMware runs a definitive hardware compatibility guide which can be found here though as you can probably imagine due to the stringent testing that has to be completed it generally only contains mid to enterprise level hardware, which for a home or work vSphere lab makes it too expensive. However, all is not lost as there are a couple of good vSphere white box lists which contain an 'unofficial' list of desktops, entry level servers and commodity motherboards and components which are known to work with ESX/ESXi - these are definitely worth checking out without:

http://vm-help.com/esx40i/esx40_whitebox_HCL.php

http://ultimatewhitebox.com/

The next thing to consider when looking at building a vSphere white box is ensuring that you have sufficient resource to run the required VMs. In your case you have a very clear idea of what you want to run on the white box so that makes things a little easier. There are four key resource/component areas which you want to look at, CPU, Memory, Disk + Controller (IOPS not just disk capacity) and Network Card - all of course are heavily influenced by the capabilities of the white boxes motherboard. Take a look at the following couple of blog posts that provide an overview on selecting the relevant components and also choosing between using an entry level server, a desktop PC/laptop or building white box for a vSphere lab solution.

This first post contains the slide deck from VMworld 2010 that I co-presented which is on building your own vSphere lab:

http://www.techhead.co.uk/vmworld-slide-deck-building-an-affordable-vsphere-environment-for-a-lab-or-small-business

This next post is one I put together that also covers the various considerations in building your own vSphere lab:

http://www.techhead.co.uk/vmware-esxi-home-lab-why-what-and-how-considerations-when-building-your-own-home-lab

With the number and types of VMs you mentioned your intending to run I would suggest that 8GB of memory may prove to be somewhat light to run the eleven VMs concurrently. The VMs you mention would run in 8GB of memory though you would likely experience considerable swapping down to disk which will impact the overall performance of your white box. Finding a commodity system board which takes more than 8GB especially on the $450 budget you mentioned will prove difficult especially if you want to populate it with the 8GB+ DIMMs as well within budget. To me you definitely sound like a lab power user so I'm guessing you'll be wanting to add more VMs over time so investing in a system board that can take more than 8GB of memory would be a good investment, if nothing else to future proof your lab server.

Also don't forget to factor in sufficient disk IO to serve your VMs running from your lab server otherwise your VMs may seem unresponsive. You may want to consider looking at an SSD and SATA disk combination to maintain the necessary IOPS on your more disk intensive VMs. Your less disk IO intensive VMs could be run on one or more SATA disks in your white box.

Another approach would be run a couple of low cost PCs/servers and distribute the VM load over the two though this would almost certainly blow your budget. Here's a couple of white box blog posts from other bloggers that you may find of use:

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2008/06/building-a-home.html

http://vsphere-land.com/vsphere-links/white-box-links-2.html

http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1431-VMWare-ESX4i-White-Box-Acer-Aspire-X5810.html

http://vinf.net/2008/01/14/vmware-esx-v35-on-cheap-pc-hardware/

I personally use entry level servers in my own vSphere lab in particular the HP Proliant ML110 and ML115 (now end of life) which can be picked up quite reasonably, although over the $450 budget you mentioned unfortunately.

Here are a couple of posts on the HP ML110

http://www.techhead.co.uk/hp-proliant-ml110-g6-released-still-a-worthy-virtualization-work-or-home-lab-server

Older post but may still be of interest:

http://www.techhead.co.uk/installing-and-running-vmware-vsphere-esx-40-on-your-lab-hp-proliant-ml110-or-ml115

Finally here is one of our vChat episodes where we discuss building your own vSphere home lab

http://www.techhead.co.uk/video-vchat-episode-3-vsphere-home-labs

Hope you find this of use and please feel free to get in touch should you have any queries.

Have fun building your new vSphere lab!

Simon

Simon Seagrave

EMC vSpecialist - Technical Enablement Team

EMail: simon.seagrave@emc.com