Looking to spend CAD$3500 on a build to test vSphere 6.0 - Recommendations?

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Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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morty

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Nov 26, 2013
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I would avoid the CX line of Corsairs... they got a bit meh on the cap selection. Go Seasonic or EVGA G2 (g1 was crap avoid it)
SeaSonic M12II 750 SS-750AM2 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Full-modular Power Supply New 4th Gen CPU Certified Haswell Ready - Newegg.ca


You can also test VSphere on a much smaller build. The question is how many VM's do you want to run and what types of VM workloads?
Basically we'd want to get a domain up and running and copy over some of our production vms to the "test box" to **** around with. I know this build is beefy, but I'd rather not have to order more parts down the road.

Also, thanks for the PSU recommendation. I'll go with that over the Corsair.
 
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Patriot

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It really isn't overly beefy... but you could still get by with less. Samsung SSDs do not like LSI controllers.

By limiting yourself to ATX you are hurting your max memory abilities...however cases get more limited at MEB EEB EATX sizes.
 
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Patriot

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Since I don't know you that well, and I tend to assume the best of people... I cannot recommend a micron drive for you.
I would say ebay some Intel s3500/s3700 drives... or just run the samsungs off of the chipset...
 
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coolrunnings82

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Mar 26, 2012
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How important is noise level to you? There are quite a few nice Supermicro chassis out there that can include hotswap power supplies which are extremely reliable. However if noise is an issue, PASS!
 

whitey

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Jun 30, 2014
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Personally I'd build a 1540 system w/ max mem in an AIO config and call it good if you don't need a cluster/advanced features of vSphere and just need to run VM's.

In my head:
$900 board
$1200-1500 128GB mem
$75 HBA/ctrl card
Remaining $1K on Intel DC s3500 capacity/s3700 cache drives

Chassis/PSU, ohh yeah I forgot abt that, got 4K budget? :-D

Load up w/ vSphere 6, config a AIO SAN VM and VT-d pass through HBA to it, config disks/pools per preference, mount back to vSphere...

Done deal!
 
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