Off topic is good!
I got this fron eBay I have had the warranty transfered and it still has 287days left.
1 x Xeon 3065
8GB ECC DDR Ram (Worth more than what I paid for the entire server!)
1TB RAID 1 on the Perc6/iR SAS/SATA controler (came with 160GB RAID 1)
Slimline DVD R/W Drive
shipped 9/23/2008
It came with Rails and front bezel and keys but the rails got destroyed by TNT (the company not the explosive) and it has a COA for Windows Web Server 2008
Good little system , it took about 15mins to remove the old HDDs, put the new ones in, Create the RAID and install Xen.
All I really wanted was a decent amount of RAM and a propper Hardware RAID controller. I was abount to sink £500 into a R200 with a Quad core CPU but at this price I just had to buy this system. I would add picture but we all know what an R200 looks like
Once its in the datacenter i'll stick up a few photos, the Firebox x1000 firewall I will be using looks bigger than the R200!
Last edited by Jay; 10-12-2010 at 06:38 PM.
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Nice price - might have to keep an eye out after Christmas. Been looking for a second ML115 G5, but the prices on those aren't anywhere near as competitive as that (especially with the RAM!). I've an HP E200 controller that I rescued from an ML350 that was going to be disposed of, will splash on a BBWC for it too, but I could use a second box as with 8Gib the ML115 is choking with the number of VMs I'm wanting to run at times.
heres a tip that might work for you.
Get an SSD on the box and move the vswap files for your VM's to it. It sounds like you are doing some considerable ram overcommit & have moved from page sharing , through balooning and into swapping. using an SSD for the swap files shoudl help alleviate some of that pain a touch. Its nowhere near as good as more RAM , but I know people who prefer that 8GB + SSD approach vs the cost of 16Gb of RAM.
my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net
Cheers for the tip Moby - I'll take a peek at it. TBH though I'd actually quite like to have another host to do some sort of comparison between ESXi (which is pretty much all I have experience of) and Hyper-V (and Xen, while I think about it).
My ideal situation would be to have 3 identically specced hosts, each running a different hypervisor. That said, I have a 40Gb SSD here with World of Warcraft and nothing more running from it - in the early part of next year I could well be tempted to pick up a later generation SSD for gaming, and 40Gb would be plenty for a few vswap files. I assume this is as simple as setting up the SSD as a seperate datastore and selecting this as the location for virtual machine swapfiles?
Thats exactly what you do
http://www.techhead.co.uk/vmware-esx...sandforce-ssds
even tips on getting it working in an ML115
I need to do a similar excercise myself , but I think the value isn't nessesarily in the hypervisor , its in the management. I've seen the stuff in the microsoft pipeline , and if its as good as it looks you want to get into it ( and thats as a hardcore vmware person )
my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net
Here's a quick guided tour of my loft installation
From top left to bottom:
- Hayes 56k modem for failover
- Server (old development workstation from the office, P4 3.0ghz, 2gb ram, a few tb of storage)
- Virgin Media 50mb modem
- NETGEAR WG102 wireless access point
- NETGEAR FS726T switch (10/100 with 2x 1000 ports)
- NETGEAR FVS338 router
- NETGEAR GS105 switch (can't justify a GS724T yet for just the two gigabit devices!)
- 2x WTI NPS-230 network power switches
nice, what are those WTI NPS-230 worth?
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This, and how do you have everything connected to them? A fair bit of your gear uses (at least by default) plug-top transformers.
A bit of info about my gear - most of the network devices use 12v so I'm using a bigger single 12v PSU (supplied with a HDD caddy, I found it to be the most efficient of the ones I had to hand) and a splitter + adapters. This way I only need one socket rather than a power strip full of them. And no, it's not being over-loaded or anything, I triple checked everything under load/all cables attached/etc.
I got the WTI units from eBay a few weeks ago - £38 for the pair, delivered. I subsequently found a review article from 2002 where they retailed for $600 each! Well regarded units it would seem, certainly seem to do a good job so far. I did have to replace the little CMOS battery in both units though since they would lose all their settings when powered off. Can't complain though at that price! Telnet and console access only normally, so I wrote a little .NET web interface as well
To power the bits that use those annoying 12v wall plug transformers, I'm using a number of these with normal IEC 'extension' leads:
http://www.digidave.co.uk/jshop/product.php?xProd=270
Very handy little inventions!
Edit: for anyone interested, those NPS units look like this on the inside:
watercooled (13-12-2010)
just looked on ebay, nothing
how do they deal with being hooked up to an UPS device? No issues with at I assume?
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Yeah I think I struck it lucky with that auction, I've never seen them on there fro ma UK seller before! There are some APC units about normally but a bit more expensive.
Not using a UPS at the moment but each power switch has two banks of 4 outlets, each with separate power feeds, so you can then power as many banks as your UPS can cope with (each is rated at 10 amps max).
10 amps is way way enough for anyone at home.
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Interesting. What does the 'boot' button do, send a magic packet or something?
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