Homelab (ESXi)

[Dooms]

Morning Hexties

*note this is starting as hardware questions and general thread, will prob turn into a software 'WTF AM I DOING' thread once I'm up and running*

As some of you know from my headaches & ranting before I recently placed my FX8350 & Sabertooth 990FX 2.0 with a i7 4790K and MSI Z97M.

This has left me with a 'spare' FX8350 with a slightly dodgy motherboard which I'm tempted to turn into a new homelab as I've started study again.

I've been doing some testing on the board and it seems to freak out when overclocked and the onboard sound card has gone nuts but if you leave everything stock it will run PRIME/Memtest all day so will prob be ok running ESXi.

So I have:
CPU: AMD FX8350
Cooler: Stock AMD
Mobo: Sabertooth 990FX 2.0
Case: Corsair Air 540 - 4x 120mm Noctua Fans
GPU: nVida 210

Need to buy:
Ram - 16 (2x8) to start with - Urgh it's so expensive!
PSU - Not sure, want cheap but not crap. Was thinking maybe this 500W EVGA @ £35
HDD - 1x 240GB SSD for the VM's and 2x 2TB drives in Raid1 for Datastore

As this won't be my main NAS (have a microserver for that) it won't be on 24/7, hopefully getting WOL working correctly so the larger powerdraw of the 8350 doesn't bother me so much

So guys - recommendation on ram, PSU and HDD?

[shaithis]

RAM - Kingston hyper x on amazon is fairly cheap atm
PSU will be fine

1x 240GB SSD for the VM's and 2x 2TB drives in Raid1 for Datastore

Bit confused as the VMs sit on the datastore.......Don't see much use of an SSD on an esx host unless you are using VSAN (where one is required) or you are going to run the VMs solely from SSD (can be a bit of a waste but hell they will be fast ).

[Dooms]

RAM - Kingston hyper x on amazon is fairly cheap atm
PSU will be fine



Bit confused as the VMs sit on the datastore.......Don't see much use of an SSD on an esx host unless you are using VSAN (where one is required) or you are going to run the VMs solely from SSD (can be a bit of a waste but hell they will be fast ).

Yeah I was eyeing up the Kingston stuff. £95.99 for 2x 8GB sticks at the moment (still depressing).

My thinking was running VM's off the SSD, keeping them lovely and fast and the just have ISO's etc on the mechs. 240gb should be fine for thin provisioning and not that expensive these days (keeping my eye on HUKD )

I'm using this has an excuse to replace a couple of my 2TB drives in the NAS so I'll have them 'left over' for this project

[abaxas]

Only real recommendation is to avoid local storage with esx. Look into iscsi/nfs from your microserver.

[shaithis]

Only real recommendation is to avoid local storage with esx. Look into iscsi/nfs from your microserver.

For a single host, there isn't much point IMO.

Now, if you want a cluster with vMotion, HA, FT etc... then that's another story.

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm using this has an excuse to replace a couple of my 2TB drives in the NAS so I'll have them 'left over' for this project

OK that makes sense then. I felt I should ask if the rebuild time on a 2TB mirror pair is likely to cause any problems on what sounds like a target practice machine. A couple of cheap 2.5in 500GB drives might be better in that sense. But if the drives are sort of free...

[abaxas]

For a single host, there isn't much point IMO.

Now, if you want a cluster with vMotion, HA, FT etc... then that's another story.

I'd partially agree, the issue is you'll spend more on a compatable raid controller than you will farming it off to a NAS (with soft raid or zfs).

[Bluecube]

I run ESXi and four VMs quite happily on 8Gb. It depends what VMs you're running of course!

Will that motherboard work with ESXi though? I know that ESXi can be picky when it comes to motherboards. Everything else is all fab but motherboards are the awkward part.

[abaxas]

I run ESXi and four VMs quite happily on 8Gb. It depends what VMs you're running of course!

Will that motherboard work with ESXi though? I know that ESXi can be picky when it comes to motherboards. Everything else is all fab but motherboards are the awkward part.

Amateur.... 28 vms in 6 gb, including 8 windows ones.

Vmware balloning is actually quite good and just allocated memory to what you need, not what you think you need.

[Bluecube]

I would run more but i don't need anymore! My imagination is probably lacking as to what I could be running.

[abaxas]

I just split every task into a new machine. That way when it decides to self implode, it's only one bit I have to fix.