http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21450305 en Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:20:15 EDT Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:20:15 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21785646
I received my Infiniband cables, switch and hca cards last week. I was able to get the OpenIB over IP drivers installed on ESX. Esx now recognzes 2 storage adapters and 2 network adapters (my cards are dual port) at a network speed of 10000. Openfiler detected the cards but I was unable to install the drivers. I now need to get a copy of Redhat EL install the infinband drivers on that.

Instead of using ISCSI for storage i will be using the infiniband RDMA which does not have the same overhead as iscsi.

]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21785646 Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:13:27 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21647137
I don't use vmware myself, but have a DRBD + OCFS2 home-made SAN that works on vaguely similar principles.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21647137 Sun, 28 Dec 2008 17:01:30 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21641354
I have quite a few pics I was hoping to upload but I broke the mini usb interface on my cam. As soon as the card reader comes in I will be adding the pics of the build.

]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21641354 Sat, 27 Dec 2008 02:16:04 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21549985
Overall the power draw is around 570 watts idle, I haven't gone into testing them under full load. Considering the last dual core dual proc. board with 24GB of ram and attached Dell storage array with 8x74GB U320 15K drives drew about 420watts I am more then impressed that 4 dual proc quad core servers draw only a little more power. Keep in mind each server recieved 400 watt 80 + certified PSU's which I swear by... they really do make a difference.

Right now I look at my weak point as being the ISCSI box. All storage is shared and therefor obviously if that box goes down all servers come to a halt. Does openfiler offer some sort or mirrored backup for ISCSI that would kick in if the primary server went down?]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21549985 Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:02:36 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21548422 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21548422 Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:14:11 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21512670 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21512670 Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:57:03 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21506432
Do your poweredge have ISCSI and TCP/IP offload engine?]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21506432 Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:36:42 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21505585 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21505585 Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:12:04 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21505494
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? ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21505494 Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:47:58 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21504799 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21504799 Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:45:23 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21503811
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).]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21503811 Sun, 30 Nov 2008 10:16:54 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21503664 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]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21503664 Sun, 30 Nov 2008 09:12:53 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21485587 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21485587 Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:37:17 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21468487 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21468487 Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:24:55 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21467008 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21467008 Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:48:25 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21461122 Video of some new network gear!]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21461122 Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:35:37 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21459982 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21459982 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:31:36 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21459741 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21459741 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:46:29 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21455363 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21455363 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:11:40 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21454243 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21454243 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:42:20 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21454230 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21454230 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:40:23 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21454207 »My Home VMWare setup]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21454207 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:34:49 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21454205
Overall I was very impressed with price. It cost me more then twice that to build my AMD server about a year ago.

As i think more and more about converting the current Intel ESX server into ISCSI and making some mini itx esx hosts, it makes more and more sense. I have ordered the mini-itx motherboard, and a couple of Qlogic hardware ISCSI initiators to help offload someone of the resources of converting to ISCSI.

The plan is to start with a Q9550 I have lying around and 2 gigs of DDR3 1600 to see if I can install ESX. If ESX installs I will be ordering another motherboard, 16GB of ram per ITX computer, and another Q9550. ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21454205 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:34:43 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21454099 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21454099 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:15:16 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21453925 ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21453925 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:45:15 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21452547 --
My Blog:
»abanzai.animeblogger.net/]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21452547 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:15:22 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21450354
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? ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21450354 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:38:21 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21450305
My old VMWare ESX setup:
2x 2.0Ghz Dual Core Socket F
Tyan HT100M Serverworks Board
Dual Core Dual Proc Socket F Opterons
24GB of ram
3 U160 18GB (ESX Host)
5 U320 15k 73GB (VMFS)
Intel PRO 1000 Dual port

My New Setup:
Intel Quadcore Q9550
ASUS P5BV/SAS (8 SAS/SATA on LSI SAS + 4 SATA on Intel SATA)
8GB of RAM
1 147GB SAS 15K (ESX Host)
4 147GB SAS 15K (VMFS)
Intel Pro 1000 MT (Dual port)
HP P600 512MB Battery backed 8 port SAS
400 Watt 80 Plus certified PSU

Now I just built my intel setup about 2 weeks ago and so far it has been amazing. Currently it is using about 130-150 watts idle versus 213-240 the other one used. 8GB is MAX this motherboard can support. Ill post pics of my rack when I get home and have a chance to add the 4 APC 2U 980Watt UPS's I got yesterday :).]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup-21450305 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:50:10 EDT