The server you spec'd out should be fine to run vSphere ESX (or ESXi). I would recommend getting ESX so you can install Dell OpenManage so you can monitor and manage the raid configuration.

If you get a PERC6i, the controller can do both the raid 1 as well as the raid 5.

The R710 has 4 onboard NICs. If also has 4 PCIe slots. So if you reserve 1 PCIe slot for a potential future PERC6E (to connect an MD1000), you are left with 3 PCIe slots that you could put NICs in if you want/need more NICs. If you do purchase NICs, and they are Gbit, I'd recommend to go with quad port NICs so you get the most out of the relatively limited number of PCIe slots. If you opt for 10Gbit NICs, verify the NIC in question is supported by ESX 4.0.

One reminder: ESX can use (virtual) disks up to "2048GB minus 512 bytes", so if you get an MD1000 and have more than that in disk space, you'll have to create smaller raid 5's to stay below this cap.

Thanks for the answer.  I have few things to wonder:

• with PERC6i, I can have 2 separate channels: RAID 1 for OS and RAID 5 for VM.  Would it be an I/O bottleneck when 2 RAID's are on same physical card or it is better to have RAID 1 running on the built-in SAS6iR and RAID 5 on PERC6i?

• what is the 4 on-board NIC's called?  I customized an R710 with an Intel PRO 1000VT Quad Port 1GbE NIC, PCIe-4.  Is this the NIC you meant?

Thanks.

SAS doesn't have the same bandwidth bottlenecks that SCSI did. With SAS each drive has it's own bandwidth, so I/O bottlenecks only come into place if you use SAS expanders and expand quite a bit.

The onboard quad port NIC is a Broadcom, so the NIC that you configured is a PCIe quad port NIC and you still get the onboard quad port as well.

Thanks.  Now I am ready to submit the quote to my boss for my first Dell server.  :emotion-1:

I got a quote for a Dell R710.  I configured it with only (4) 300 GB SAS drives as RAID 5.  I see in some other posts people said using RAID 1 for the the ESXi and RAID 5 for the VM's.  What is the pros separating ESXi and VM's like this?  I thought it is true if I am running Windows then the OS on RAID 1 and data on RAID 5 but this is ESXi using little space

Thanks.

BTW, I configured the server with ESXi embeded on SD card.  

If you chose ESXi, I don't see the reason to 'waste' a whole raid 1 (2 disks) for an OS that fits on a 1GB or so flash drive inside the server.

ESXi does have one drawback; you connect to the console (or not in a VMware supported fashion).

This means you cannot install Dell OpenManage, so you can only monitor the basic raid functionality that's native to ESX; it shows if there's a drive failure, but after you swap in a replacement drive you cannot see if the rebuild started and how it's progressing.

So what is the advantage of buying the ESXi embedded from Dell over using the ESXi downloaded from VMware? 

With R710 and ESXi 4.0 embeded, if I want to monitor the server and receive email alerts in case of hw failure, what do I need to add/modify to the quote? 

• VMware ESXi v4.0, 2CPU, Basic License, SD (421-1272)
• VMware ESXi v4.0, 2CPU Embedded, Basic, 0 Yr Upgrade Subscription, SD (421-1255)

Thanks.

If I were making the choice, I'd go with full ESX, not ESXi.

This does take some disk space on a raid set (8-16GB depending on your preferences), but the remainder of the space you can format for use for VMs.

I love to but the budget is low :emotion-6:

My sale rep said with the iDRAC Ent and DMC, I can monitor the server remotely and receive alerts in case of HW failure.  Since I never work with Dell HW and VMware do you think it meets my requirements:

• I can backup and restore ESXi using esxcfg-cfgbackup.pl
• I can backup and restore VM's using native ntbackup
• I can remotely monitor the R710 and receive alert with iDRAC and Dell Management Console

Thanks,