Recommedations for setting up a home VMware lab

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billprice

New Member
May 17, 2013
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Florida
Im a long time Solaris/Linux/Unix administrator and I'd like to setup a inexpensive ESXi training lab in my home. I'd like to play around with VMotion so I would need two close to identical servers. Looking around, I see that either Dell 2950 IIIs or Hp DL 360 Gen 5s are in my price range. Besides the face that the Dells are 2U and the HP are 1U, is there anything I should consider. Any reason one would be better choice? As far as storage, I have an 8 drive bay tower sitting around doing nothing. I was thinking about replacing the processor/motherboard ( currently an AMD XP 2600 ) and installing OpenIndiana. Anything else I should watch out for?

Thanks for any recommendations
 

N3RO

Member
Jun 5, 2013
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Subscribed.

Same here. My choice was DL160 G6 (1U, inexpensive DDR3, dual CPU, not next gen but enough), and now looking for a 2nd server.
For storage I'm thinking about SAN/DAS. Need to check pros/cons yet.
 

Fzdog2

Member
Sep 21, 2012
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Might as well just get a Dell C6100 for $700. Best home lab machine if you have a place to keep the noise muffled.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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dl160 g6 [ 2 socket 18 dimm ] - dl360 with dl320 weird power supply options.
dl180 g6 [ 2 socket 12 dimm ] - 24/25 SFF with 2 REAR LFF or 12 LFF with 2 REAR LFF - P410 will use only slot on 2LFF REAR models - regular RPS power supplies - workstation class motherboard with lo100 no ilo2 - only SE1220 has real ilo2 and regular HP bios - sas expander !! watch out!!
dl320 g6 [ 1 socket 9 dimm ] - like DL160 but half as much expansion - 8 SFF possible but 4LFF likely - goofy RPS possible most as non-RPS incompatible with Dl380/dl360
dl380 g6 [ 2 socket 18 dimm ] - 16 SFF possible, 2 PCIE riser possible - 4 gigabit built in with dedicated ilo2 and regular RPS - undesirable 6LFF use 4+2 split for raid
dl360 g6 [ 2 socket 18 dimm ] - 8 SFF no expander - less expansion G6 has only 2 gigabit, dedicated ilo2 - regular RPS - P410 on mobo - some models had a sas expander most don't
 

levinagill

New Member
Aug 2, 2013
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A'bad
www.mindarraysystems.com
I prefer to use HP product.Prepare yourself a HP Proliant Microserver,they are very cheap low end server which comes shipped with 1Gb of memory and small hard disk.add 8Gb (2x 4Gb DDR3 sticks) and another hard disk of your choice for making virtual machine.
 

wrigleyvillain

New Member
Oct 19, 2012
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Or you can just homebuild "White Box" it. Google "exsi white box hardware specs" or some such. I am presently using ESXi 5 free on my repurposed old gaming rig. Threw in max RAM and Intel NIC and a >$100 IBM M1015 from eBay flashed to LSI 9240-IR plus more drives and I'm good to go for initial educational purposes.
 

billprice

New Member
May 17, 2013
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Florida
I went with an DL360 G5 with 32GB RAM. The guy I bought my rack from had some Dell 1650s he wanted to get rid of. I had a couple of old 140 GB SCSI drives laying around, so I install FreeNAS 9.1 on them for my first NAS. I build another FreeNAS box using some old 200 GB IDE drives and an AMD XP2600 with 1GB of RAM. My next build is going to be a OpenIndiana NAS with 3 WD 2TB Red disks (to start) using an AMD A10 with 16 GB of RAM. Lots of old stuff, but hey I admit,Im a junk yard dog.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
1,244
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yeah no kidding I can't even give away my dl380 G5 or dl320S (storage server) lol. Gonna have to go sneak out and dump them at the qwikee mart dumpster at night soon.