Building a cheap ESX farm...

[shaithis]

So, it was about time I sorted my network out.......I've had a ton of windows servers crammed onto an ESX host that was made from spare parts a few years ago.....it is creeking and groaning way too much and I even virtuallised my PDC and vCentre server - tut tut.

So after spending a ridiculous number of hours researching over the last few days I finally ordered all my bits to replace it.

DC, vCentre Server and NFS
The NAS is going and I have picked up a HP ML110 G5 from ebay for £144. I have 8GB DDR2 to slap in it (almost sold it a few times recently ).....going to reclaim the HDDs from my NAS and install 4 of them on the internal RAID (128MB BBWC unit built in!) and then enable the NFS service to use the storage for VMDK storage.

ESX Hosts
Decided to go with a 2 node ESX cluster.....with the following cheap and upgradable hardware:
Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 (On-board NIC is ESX 5.0 compatible)
Athlon X3 455
8GB DDR3 1600
Asus TM-B11 (seems small enough)
Enermax ENP350AGT
Also have a Intel PCI-E GBe NIC to add to each one to seperate vMotion/vmdk traffic from LAN

Cost ~200 each.

I had a look at the Microservers but by the time you add 8GB it's only 40 less and no upgradability. These will take 2 more DIMMs and Bulldozer chips

Really looking forward to a whole new era of network performance and reliability

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Phenom II X6 1055T is starting to drop in price. Aria had them for around £108 last week.

They also seem to have the Athlon II X3 for a relatively low price:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...NQZXJQYWdlPSY=

[shaithis]

I was sooooo tempted by the hex core but I am going to 'slum' it with 2 triple cores load-balanced instead.

At least until I can justify swapping them for BD chips