Vmware box help

[abaxas]

Hi all.

Just in need of a little advice,help etc.

I currently run two esxi machines, one in production and other in 'testing'. But I want to move both boxes to production, hence I'll need some kind of test box.

Processing power is not important, memory is. So I need the cheapest solution that will take the maximum memory.

In terms of ESXi HCL this shouldnt be a problem as I have supported nics in stock and all storage will be iscsi.

Any ideas? 16 gig of memory would be nice, even if it had an atom cpu

[aidanjt]

What would you need two testing boxes for?

The whole point of using VMs in production is to simplify host management, all you really need to be concerned with is the VMs themselves, and you can even test those in VMware Player.

[abaxas]

What would you need two testing boxes for?

The whole point of using VMs in production is to simplify host management, all you really need to be concerned with is the VMs themselves, and you can even test those in VMware Player.

I'll not explain what I do, I just need to build a large memory box to build/test vmware images on.

Vmware player if fine, but why bother when you can have esxi for free and manage remotely. The vms are not interactive other than through ssh.

There must be a MB/cpu compo that is cheap but will support 8 dimms? That would be perfect.

[aidanjt]

Nope, any motherboards with more than 6 DIMM slots are going to be FB-DIMM slots, and the board decidedly workstation/server class. Just get an i7 board and 12GB of ram. Tis close enough for a testing box.

[abaxas]

Nope, any motherboards with more than 6 DIMM slots are going to be FB-DIMM slots, and the board decidedly workstation/server class.

So, can anyone recommend a MB with 6 dimm slots?

INTEL/AMD doesnt matter.

[aidanjt]

This: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MSI-X...Gb-s-RAID-MATX ?

Doubt the integrated NIC is ESX compatible, but it's silly cheap and you have NICs available. *sigh* I miss the days where you could actually get a mainstream board with an Intel NIC integrated.

[abaxas]

This: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MSI-X...Gb-s-RAID-MATX ?

Doubt the integrated NIC is ESX compatible, but it's silly cheap and you have NICs available. *sigh* I miss the days where you could actually get a mainstream board with an Intel NIC integrated.

Agreed.

But in the race to Gigabit, that 0.03p per mobo makes the difference.

It's easy to market something where the 'specs' are the same.

[aidanjt]

Asus managed it on my P4 board. They should be cheaper by now.

[mycarsavw]

MSI also make/made a "Memory Lover" board called the P45-8D with 8 DIMMs (4 DDR2, 4 DDR3) that supports 16GB DDR2 or up to 8GB of DDR3

Probably going to be tough to find one though, they're about 12 months old now and having looked at the other MSI board above, this one is pretty irrelevant

[ash_rm]

How many vm's are you planning on running at once? If you can settle with 8GB max you might be able to get hold of a HP Proliant ML115 G5 or similar for under £200.

I'm running esxi on the ML115 with 4GB RAM and have quite a few vm's running at once.

[abaxas]

How many vm's are you planning on running at once? If you can settle with 8GB max you might be able to get hold of a HP Proliant ML115 G5 or similar for under £200.

I'm running esxi on the ML115 with 4GB RAM and have quite a few vm's running at once.

Tha madness is, that is what I used in testing.

I suppose I could jsut wait round for another offer on them.

[Moby-Dick]

how about one of these...
http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/13...-for-ESX4.html

[shaithis]

Get a 6 DIMM X58 board and slap 6 x 4GB DDR3 in it!

I am currently running a 8GB machine with 6 Windows2008 R2 Servers on it and TBH, it could do with some more RAM, just cannot justify the cost at the moment....and it's still quite a performer, the memory balooning and sharing seems to work quite adaquately.

[Moby-Dick]

RAM is always going to be your bottleneck unless you really scale it up in the hosts - I run 128Gb on mine ( 96 on the blades )

[InkZ]

I bought a couple of HP DL380's from the bay for about £100 each and chucked 12gb in them which is the max they'll take.

ESX is a pain as it won't run on all normal PCs, you'll need to do some research if it's not a server machine. It didn't like SATA very much last time I tried.