Looking for advice on low power consumption hardware for a second ESXi Node.

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Socrates

Member
Dec 28, 2016
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I'd like to add a second node for HA for my ESXI host. This is mainly for network availability while the primary node is down.
So I'd like to keep the power consumption extremely low for this server. I was initially researching on a fully ready to go R710 that can be had for under 200 bucks used on ebay, but the problem with this server is the fan noise. R720 and R810 though the fan is much quiter but higher in price and high power consumption.

Hence I am looking at you to help me identify hardware, that is low on noise and low in power consumption.
Should I go for building the server from the scratch, or pick up on of the dell's or ibm servers as mentioned above. If so what, please guide.
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
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A few details about what you are looking to achieve would help you get better advice. How many cores, how much memory, do you need single-thread speed or more cores, how much disk, speed of network (10G or 1G or Nx1G)? Or at the very least some idea of the workloads you are running. What’s more important: cost, capability, noise or power (you can usually not optimize for all four in the same system).

Without this the advice you’ll get will be all over the map and confusing/conflicting.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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When you say it's "mainly" for availability when the primary node is down for maintenance, how much as a percentage of time is that...? Because if 99% of the time it's going to be sitting there doing nothing, you could just keep it turned off and only turn it on when you're planning to bounce the primary node.

Otherwise if you want to ensure availability if the primary host goes down unplanned and want to keep both hosts on 24/7, you want something that's as low a powered a version as possible of what you have already (as keeping the same processor family means no hassles with vmotion, else you need to start applyinh compatibility masks) and has enough RAM to comfortably hold your "essential" load (as it's possible you might have a bunch of dev VMs that could be turned off for the duration of any downtime on the primary).

Back when I used to run a mini-homelab ESXi cluster at home (on a couple of Xeon E3 v2's), one of the nodes was only ever powered up when performing maintenance on the second. The cost of running two nodes simultaneously wasn't worth it, since there was nothing running on there that I couldn't live without for ten minutes.
 

Socrates

Member
Dec 28, 2016
92
7
8
47
When you say it's "mainly" for availability when the primary node is down for maintenance, how much as a percentage of time is that...? Because if 99% of the time it's going to be sitting there doing nothing, you could just keep it turned off and only turn it on when you're planning to bounce the primary node.

Otherwise if you want to ensure availability if the primary host goes down unplanned and want to keep both hosts on 24/7, you want something that's as low a powered a version as possible of what you have already (as keeping the same processor family means no hassles with vmotion, else you need to start applyinh compatibility masks) and has enough RAM to comfortably hold your "essential" load (as it's possible you might have a bunch of dev VMs that could be turned off for the duration of any downtime on the primary).

Back when I used to run a mini-homelab ESXi cluster at home (on a couple of Xeon E3 v2's), one of the nodes was only ever powered up when performing maintenance on the second. The cost of running two nodes simultaneously wasn't worth it, since there was nothing running on there that I couldn't live without for ten minutes.
Love this suggestion. I might go with this.. keep it powered off... and turn it on online when needed. These are not production systems.. just home lab.