Hi all,
I've been reading a bit at this forum and there's a lot of good information. I've been looking for used server to replace the current one. I got a 1u Supermicro server about two years ago and used it for home lab. It has 16GB and single hard drive. It can be upgraded to 32GB but I'd have to discard all modules and get new set of 8GB modules. Anyway, I started with 2 VMs and now I have more than 8 VMs however I can only run 3-4 VMs at a time due to single hard drive (I have to backup weekly or so). Just didn't envision that I'd have more VMs at this point. That being said, I originally planned to move VMs to NAS but realized 1GBPS or even teaming will not suffice. So, I decided I'd go for used server with RAID controller - more likely RAID 10. I wasn't sure which processors to look for. The current server uses X3440 and I think to this day it performs fairly well, again, it's just for home lab. I came across this forum and learned a bit about Avoton (Atom C2750). I'm not quite sure if it's suitable for ESXi. I just don't want to go overboard in terms of specs and I'm interested in low power consumption. The current ESXi runs a variety of VMs - Linux/FreeBSD servers, windows 2012 servers (MS SQL, SharePoint). I'd like to be able to run 5-7 VMs at any given time and with my current server I cannot. Also, I think 32GB will be good to start and expand as necessary.
By the way, I saw a post talking about InfinitiBand and adapters can be bought at ebay for roughly 150 or so. I have NAS appliance and eventually I'd like to build a new NAS utilizing ZFS; and with InfinitiBand I could keep datastore(s) on NAS. I think that is something I'd like to try at some point in future. For now, I think replacing existing ESXi is something I need to do as soon as possible since it does not have redundancy and has I/O bottleneck.
Should I consider Avoton? Or should I go with E3 or E5 Xeon processor? Will RAID 10 suffice?
I welcome suggestions and critiques. Thanks.
Ethan
I've been reading a bit at this forum and there's a lot of good information. I've been looking for used server to replace the current one. I got a 1u Supermicro server about two years ago and used it for home lab. It has 16GB and single hard drive. It can be upgraded to 32GB but I'd have to discard all modules and get new set of 8GB modules. Anyway, I started with 2 VMs and now I have more than 8 VMs however I can only run 3-4 VMs at a time due to single hard drive (I have to backup weekly or so). Just didn't envision that I'd have more VMs at this point. That being said, I originally planned to move VMs to NAS but realized 1GBPS or even teaming will not suffice. So, I decided I'd go for used server with RAID controller - more likely RAID 10. I wasn't sure which processors to look for. The current server uses X3440 and I think to this day it performs fairly well, again, it's just for home lab. I came across this forum and learned a bit about Avoton (Atom C2750). I'm not quite sure if it's suitable for ESXi. I just don't want to go overboard in terms of specs and I'm interested in low power consumption. The current ESXi runs a variety of VMs - Linux/FreeBSD servers, windows 2012 servers (MS SQL, SharePoint). I'd like to be able to run 5-7 VMs at any given time and with my current server I cannot. Also, I think 32GB will be good to start and expand as necessary.
By the way, I saw a post talking about InfinitiBand and adapters can be bought at ebay for roughly 150 or so. I have NAS appliance and eventually I'd like to build a new NAS utilizing ZFS; and with InfinitiBand I could keep datastore(s) on NAS. I think that is something I'd like to try at some point in future. For now, I think replacing existing ESXi is something I need to do as soon as possible since it does not have redundancy and has I/O bottleneck.
Should I consider Avoton? Or should I go with E3 or E5 Xeon processor? Will RAID 10 suffice?
I welcome suggestions and critiques. Thanks.
Ethan