GREMBLING22
join:2000-10-14
Southbridge, MA
| reply to GREMBLING22
Re: Updated VMware / Home Lab setup.
While looking around the net i stumbled upon the newer mini-itx motherboards which supported 16GB of ram and a Quad core proc. I was also able to find a 2U Rackmount case that fit 2 mini ITX motherboards.
Im hoping to get vmware esx setup on these and have 2 high powered esx hosts that consumed low power. I would buy a lower wattage Quad core proc. for my curent intel esx server and convert it to run iscsi for the 2 mini itx servers.
I think with the ICH7-M chipset the mini itx computer uses my host drive should be recognized, and with all VMFS going over iscsi to 15K sas drives i should haven't the problem most people have with getting a compatible SATA or SAS controller for the VMFS storage. The MINI-ITX boards only draw about 70 watts idle, which is half oh my Current Intel VMWAre server.
With this setup I will be able to go further into testing ISCSI, VMotion and HA.
What do you guys think of buying the case, 16GB of ram per motherboard (32GB total), a couple of Q9550's, and putting them as esx hosts? |
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IT2_USN
@comcast.net | May I ask what brand and model of mini-itx board you're looking at? Also, which 2u case you found that is made for 2 mini-itx boards? Thanks. |
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GREMBLING22
join:2000-10-14
Southbridge, MA | After searching for the past couple of days I am now not so sure it was mini-itx. I believe what I was looking at was micro-atx. The case for dual mini-itx can be found on ebay as a no-name by searchin "dual mini-itx rackmount". |
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watts3000
join:2002-01-21
Birmingham, AL
1 edit | I'm going to get serious about a esx setup for home over the next few months. However, I plan to do mostly iscsi and nfs for storage so I will be investing in building a decent stotage setup running openfiler. Also I will try to boot esx3i from flash either a usb key or some type of cf adapter thus allowing me to avoid running hard drives in my esx host. I have not decided what I'm going to do for the esx host I've looked at a few asus barebones.
However, I'm going to check out the itx stuff I've run openfiler 2.3 with every flavor of esx 3. and I've never had any problems. I don't want to put out a lot of cash on a hardware raid controller so I'm going to do software raid with filer. I think your plan is great on buying the intel q9550s with 16 to 32 ggs of ram you will be able to test tons of stuff for example exchange 2007, sql server 2005, sql 2008. You will be able to do any clustering setup under the sun and get great performance. Now have you thought about getting a good layer 3 gig switch. They can get expensive so I might get a switch that can do vlans but has no routing ability I will than run a trunk to a monowall box and let monowall route the vlan traffic its amazing what you can do with some intel nics. Overall. I don't want to spend a ton of money on the host imo it's all about the backend storage as long as my host have a good number of pci slots for nics than I'm good |
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GREMBLING22
join:2000-10-14
Southbridge, MA
| Actually my whole Idea for the esx buildout has changed.
I won an auction for (8) 55watt quad core opterons, I also won an action for 4GB x 32 chips of ram.
My buildout will now consist of 4 Dual proc. Socket F motherboards with 2 quad core 1.8Ghz 55watt opterons and 32GB of ram per motherboard (motherboards max for mem).
Each of the 4 Tyan motherboards will recieve a Qlogic 4010c ISCSI hardware initiator to offload ISCSI traffic.
The current Intel ESX server (Q9550 8GB of ram) will be converted into an Openfiler ISCSI box. This box will have (4) SAS 147GB 15K drives in raid 10, and (6) 1.5TB SATA drives in raid 6 (home file storage). The SAS controller is an HP P800 512MB 16port controller which can handle SATA as well. The ISCSI box will also recieve 3 Qlogic 4010 initiators. (two for esx iscsi, one for home network filestorage). |
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watts3000
join:2002-01-21
Birmingham, AL
| You have a really nice esx setup. So are you going to take the vcp exam or do you already have your vcp. I took a fast track class on 3.5 a few months back so it's time for me to try to get some type of lab together at home so I can prep for the exam. Or I could just use a couple dell 2950's at work to build a lab. I must ask the equipment you have cost a good bit of cash are you paying for this put of pocket or does your company pick up the tab |
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GREMBLING22
join:2000-10-14
Southbridge, MA
| All of this has been out of pocket. Believe it or not though this setup of 4 ESX servers and one openfiler box has only set me back a little over $3000. I sold my first Dual Core Dual Proc ESX box for about $1200 so the new servers only cost me about $1800.
You said you were using openfiler? My current tests on the Intel Q9550 with 8GB of ram and dual port Intel Pro 1000MT only gets me a max of 60MB/s on a VM over ISCSI. Have you been able to obtain at least close to line speed of GigEthernet? |
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watts3000
join:2002-01-21
Birmingham, AL
| I have not been able to obtain line speed of gig and I'm running it on a dell poweredge 2950 4 gigs of ram and 6 300 gig 15k sas drives. I plan on doing more testing and tweaks to try to get the speed up. BTW what are you going to do about a layer 3 switch |
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grembling222
@charter.com
| what type of speeds are you getting? While the ESX service console supports jumbo frames, the VMKernel does not. Meaning ISCSI on VMWare does not currently support JUMBO frames. There are a few tweaks you can run via command line to enable them on the vswitch and VMKernel.
Do your poweredge have ISCSI and TCP/IP offload engine? |
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GREMBLING22
join:2000-10-14
Southbridge, MA | I was finally able to mess around with some settings and was able to get my intel adapter to hit 85MB/s. Im happy with that but im hoping for more. |
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