I've mentioned this is the past and for the most part it will just reinforce what some others have said. I have an old Dell Precision T5400 running ESX 4.1, and soon 5. It's booting off a little 30GB SSD. VM Storage is on a mirror pair of Western Digital WD2002FYPS 2TB Black. What makes the difference is the amount of RAM you have available (16GB in this one) AND a RAID controller that IS ON THE VMWARE HCL LIST. I tried multiple configs for storage in the beginning. I finally just broke down and got an LSI Megaraid SATA 300 controller off ebay and haven't looked back. There's no specific reason I used a T5400, almost any precision workstation will work as well as a Poweredge server. I've even installed ESX on an antique Precision M90 Laptop and it ran great. Run 7 or so VM's on it, DC, exchange, VDR, VCenter, surveillance DVR, few misc workstations.
________________________________ From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:k...@adopenstatic.com] Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2011 4:51 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Lab Computer / Server at Home + Vmware Hyper-V on both. The "Production" one is running Windows Home Server v1, Forefront TMG, WSUS, 2 x DCs and Exchange 2010 (plus DHCP, Print, CA etc.) on 2 x 128GB SSDs and 2 x 2TB mechanical drives. Cheers Ken From: justino garcia [mailto:jgarciaitl...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, 2 November 2011 9:31 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Lab Computer / Server at Home + Vmware are you running any hypervisor on the microserver? On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Ken Schaefer <k...@adopenstatic.com<mailto:k...@adopenstatic.com>> wrote: Any 1U server is going to be noisy due to the high-speed fans. If you want something quiet, you could look at the HP Proliant Microserver. I have two of them - but they only go up to 8GB of RAM each. Mounting 2.5" SSDs is also a bit tricky, but can be done with a SATA power/data extension cable. Cheers Ken From: Harry Singh [mailto:hbo...@gmail.com<mailto:hbo...@gmail.com>] Sent: Tuesday, 1 November 2011 10:53 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Lab Computer / Server at Home + Vmware FWIW, I've started looking for a server with as small as possible footprint to run esxi or xenserver. Anyone have or use something you can recommend? The Dell R210 could work but also looking for a small/mini tower too. http://hcl.xensource.com/ On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 10:30 AM, Webster <webs...@carlwebster.com<mailto:webs...@carlwebster.com>> wrote: Make sure you check the VMware HCL to verify the components are supported. http://tinyurl.com/VMwareHCL Carl Webster Consultant and Citrix Technology Professional http://www.CarlWebster.com<http://www.carlwebster.com/> From: justino garcia [mailto:jgarciaitl...@gmail.com<mailto:jgarciaitl...@gmail.com>] Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2011 9:08 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Lab Computer / Server at Home + Vmware http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101377 Do you think this is a good start, to start as a home lab Machine with VMWARE EXSI. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
