VM Host

[BinaryData]

The M.2 Slot is to accommodate new "blade" style SSD's. They are tiny sticks that look like ram, but the connector is on the width side and not on the length / long side. Here is a picture to show all the sizes and the connector. http://en.apacer.com/pub/images/aq/2013/2013070911444412.jpg

 

M.2 / PCI-e SSD's are super slim and super speedy. I bought a M.2 PCI-e SSD type 2282 for my mini ITX / Steambox build and it pushes 1.2 Gb/s. The biggest reason to use one is reliability and usually GOOD board manufacturers are building the M.2 slot on the back of the mobo. So its out of the way.

Quad Nic just means it has 4 ethernet ports. 

 

For storage, I personally recommend you either build or buy a centralized storage server. I bought a HP Microserver Gen8, one of the only prebuilt machines I've bought in the last 8 years, but it was a good deal and the micro servers are really good machines for there price. Anyway, I bought a HP Gen8 Microserver, put 4 x 4TB Red's, put 32GBs of RAM in it and installed freenas on it. One thing thats wonderful about this machine is it comes with a microsd card slot on the motherboard. So I put the OS on the SD card and boom boots up in 4 minutes thats including server hardware checks. I recommend this kind of setup because Freenas will allow you to learn a lot about storage and the networking protocols that come with it. SMB/AFP/NFS/ISCSI/etc. It will also get you into the unix world and get you learning permissions for both Windows ACL and POSIX's ACL. You'll learn a LOT (so document everything you do is my recommendation) and you'll get to play a lot.

I definitely am happy I built a real FreeNAS box because I use this thing everyday and love it. I recommend the same to anyone who wants a simple centralized storage server and anyone who wants to learn more about the storage aspect of IT. The company I work for is a big user of storage, so Im always working with storage and i've loved the last 3 years of it. Storage is very interesting and I know way too much about how hard drives work. With your budget I think you can build a nice ESXi host and a storage server without any problems.

 

That's what I'm hoping for. Would 6TB drives be too much to push for? I know there is a major difference between the operation of 6TB and 4TB drives. I believe one of them is filled with hydrogen, while the other is standard oxygen.

Like I said to BudMan, give me links, and examples. I'll start compiling and figuring out what to buy. I've gotta finish my Desktop before I start this project, waiting for this check to clear. Apparently, anything above 10,000$ the IRS freaks out about. I feel probed after talking to the IRS.

 

 

 

I would say all Server OS's now a days have to HAVE support for multiple CPU's. Linux will use what you give it, its never had a "CPU Limit" like Windows does. But thats because of licensing. Deep down I don't think any kernel disables CPUs.

 

Ahh. That's what I guessed.

[Sikh]

That's what I'm hoping for. Would 6TB drives be too much to push for? I know there is a major difference between the operation of 6TB and 4TB drives. I believe one of them is filled with hydrogen, while the other is standard oxygen.

Like I said to BudMan, give me links, and examples. I'll start compiling and figuring out what to buy. I've gotta finish my Desktop before I start this project, waiting for this check to clear. Apparently, anything above 10,000$ the IRS freaks out about. I feel probed after talking to the IRS.

 

 

 

 

Ahh. That's what I guessed.

 

IRS is no fun at all.

 

Links:

 

Microserver: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9133695&SRCCODE=WEBGOOPA&scid=scplp1420751&gclid=Cj0KEQjw_9OoBRChj9vMo5CHrdUBEiQAJ6YRPWwMTwrzH_pQd0896AZvGOsG7jdC2Mb-mreTfaCrfvoaAkPL8P8HAQ

 

RAM: Would just be any ECC Ram you find a good deal on. The specs from hp say it only supports "16GBs" max but thats because 2 slots and default cpu. RAM is controlled by CPU and the CPU in the above micro server supports 32GBs max. I was able to find 2 16gb sticks, paid an arm and a leg at the time, but it was worth it. The rule for FreeNAS to run comfortable and no bottlenecks is, 1gb of RAM per TB. This is a filesystem (ZFS) rule but its a good one to follow. More RAM makes ZFS happy which keeps FreeNAS happy which ultimately keeps you happy.

 

Hard Drives: http://www.amazon.com/Red-4TB-NAS-Hard-Drive/dp/B00EHBERSE 

I recommend the WD Reds. Ive never had a problem with WD and the Red's are doing really well for me. I haven't had any experience with 6TB drives and so I can't recommend them or advise you on them, but I've read enough about them to know that they are still new. I personally wouldn't trust using them unless I had a backup, which you should. Your storage server is NOT A BACKUP. So as long as you have a backup to your storage server and have a spare drive or two sitting by, you'll be fine. Also looks like WD makes 6TB Reds, so I would go for them. 

 

 

As far as hardware for the ESXI Host, it really comes down to what you want. I can put a part list together if you give me an idea of what you want. I have an idea of what you want, but your talking 4 CPUs and etc. Overall I think a single cpu / 32gbs of ram machine will go a long while for you. You can easily host 10+ vm's that are running all the time and not have problems, especially if most of them were linux and you had 2-3 active VM's doing stuff all the time regardless of OS. I have 4 active VMs but they are VPN, DNS, VCS and Windows 10 TP. Besides this, other VM's run all the time but they are all linux vms and I'm playing with new open source projects / apps in them.

[BinaryData]

IRS is no fun at all.

 

Links:

 

Microserver: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9133695&SRCCODE=WEBGOOPA&scid=scplp1420751&gclid=Cj0KEQjw_9OoBRChj9vMo5CHrdUBEiQAJ6YRPWwMTwrzH_pQd0896AZvGOsG7jdC2Mb-mreTfaCrfvoaAkPL8P8HAQ

 

RAM: Would just be any ECC Ram you find a good deal on. The specs from hp say it only supports "16GBs" max but thats because 2 slots and default cpu. RAM is controlled by CPU and the CPU in the above micro server supports 32GBs max. I was able to find 2 16gb sticks, paid an arm and a leg at the time, but it was worth it. The rule for FreeNAS to run comfortable and no bottlenecks is, 1gb of RAM per TB. This is a filesystem (ZFS) rule but its a good one to follow. More RAM makes ZFS happy which keeps FreeNAS happy which ultimately keeps you happy.

 

Hard Drives: http://www.amazon.com/Red-4TB-NAS-Hard-Drive/dp/B00EHBERSE 

I recommend the WD Reds. Ive never had a problem with WD and the Red's are doing really well for me. I haven't had any experience with 6TB drives and so I can't recommend them or advise you on them, but I've read enough about them to know that they are still new. I personally wouldn't trust using them unless I had a backup, which you should. Your storage server is NOT A BACKUP. So as long as you have a backup to your storage server and have a spare drive or two sitting by, you'll be fine. Also looks like WD makes 6TB Reds, so I would go for them. 

 

 

As far as hardware for the ESXI Host, it really comes down to what you want. I can put a part list together if you give me an idea of what you want. I have an idea of what you want, but your talking 4 CPUs and etc. Overall I think a single cpu / 32gbs of ram machine will go a long while for you. You can easily host 10+ vm's that are running all the time and not have problems, especially if most of them were linux and you had 2-3 active VM's doing stuff all the time regardless of OS. I have 4 active VMs but they are VPN, DNS, VCS and Windows 10 TP. Besides this, other VM's run all the time but they are all linux vms and I'm playing with new open source projects / apps in them.

Microserver - Thanks for that link!

 

RAM - Interesting.. Does that philosophy follow work with say, 8x6TB Drives for a total of 48TB? I've always followed the math rule;

1x4 = 4

2x4 = 8

3x4 = 12

4x4 = 16 etc.. Understandable?

 

Hard Drives - Well, if I'm buying a LOT of HDDs, say 6, I'd go with 4TB drives. 6TB @ 300$ a pop is SPENDY. And, I love that you use and recommend WD. I only buy WD drives. The Seagates I had, had a cluster of issues. I bought 6 from the same batch, 5 of 6 were DOA, 6th had bad sectors in it. Windows refused to acknowledge it, Ubutnu said "It's messed up, buy a new one" essentially.

As for the hardware, that'd be great. If I gave you a budget to work with, would that be better? I mentioned 4 CPUs because I looked at one of the incoming tickets at work, and it's a server rocking 4x CPUs, and I was curious because the OS was blank.

I think at most, I'd probably have 10 VMs. My webhost/repository, my RHEL 6.5 learning, Windows 2008 / 2012 for my MCSA, and the option to run others for learning purposes. I would think 1 - 3 active would be beneficial, and having the others I can turn on for short periods.

Overall, my goal is to learn. The better I can understand how something works, the better I can do my job. Part of this is towards a personal project. I wanted to convert a 2D game from the 90s to a 3D Game and call it my own. It runs on Windows only right now, and destroys the resources. It has so many memory leaks, and HOGS cpu. We tested it on a Dual Xeon Processor server, rocking 32GB of RAM, and it ate 70% CPU, with 24GB of Memory consumed. This is just the Gate Server, Login, and the World Host (Gate is a "door" to the Login, login is the login, and the world host grants you access to the MapServers). But my knowledge isn't high enough for that project. Thus why I'm learning other things. BudMan has an idea of the volume of information I'm after, and in the time frame.

 

Edited

After I got my setup finished, I was going to look into building a backup host, it would serve strictly as a back up. Boot up at x day, at x time, for x time, and then shut down after that. Also, I make x amount of money, and I'm left with about $1200 left over every month. I'm supposed to be saving it, but once I get this built, along with my network, and my new desktop, I'll start saving.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Zenzija

[sc302 Veteran]

Eh, I know they are. I walk through our Hall and there in almost every cabinet. But having a custom built, would be more beneficial to my situation, no? It'd allow me the flexibility of upgrading. I know I'm not allowed to touch the Dell/HP Servers, god knows I'd love to play with them. Sometimes, I wish I could misplace one in my trunk

On a side note: OS wise, does RHEL, and other OS's (Windows Server 2008/2012) support multiple CPUs, I mean like say 4?

fwiw, you can upgrade dell servers...they have the same flexability as building your own, if you do your research.

 

while the dell and hp servers like to have their branded drives in them (usually seagate or wd with their own firmware flashed on), they do accept other drives without their custom firmware.  They also accept crucial memory, and have pci based riser boards.  You can swap processors to get the fastest the board can handle or what you can afford.  So, I am not sure how much more flexibility you are looking for...perhaps you want to rip everything out and fit in a board from a main frame and run a large set of legacy tapes to access data....not sure where to go with this on how flexible you want it to be...but they are pretty flexible within reason.  

 

As far as your side note, windows will support more processors...however you will not be looking at the standard version if you want it to support more than 2...that would be datacenter.

[Sikh]

Microserver - Thanks for that link!

 

RAM - Interesting.. Does that philosophy follow work with say, 8x6TB Drives for a total of 48TB? I've always followed the math rule;

1x4 = 4

2x4 = 8

3x4 = 12

4x4 = 16 etc.. Understandable?

 

Hard Drives - Well, if I'm buying a LOT of HDDs, say 6, I'd go with 4TB drives. 6TB @ 300$ a pop is SPENDY. And, I love that you use and recommend WD. I only buy WD drives. The Seagates I had, had a cluster of issues. I bought 6 from the same batch, 5 of 6 were DOA, 6th had bad sectors in it. Windows refused to acknowledge it, Ubutnu said "It's messed up, buy a new one" essentially.

As for the hardware, that'd be great. If I gave you a budget to work with, would that be better? I mentioned 4 CPUs because I looked at one of the incoming tickets at work, and it's a server rocking 4x CPUs, and I was curious because the OS was blank.

I think at most, I'd probably have 10 VMs. My webhost/repository, my RHEL 6.5 learning, Windows 2008 / 2012 for my MCSA, and the option to run others for learning purposes. I would think 1 - 3 active would be beneficial, and having the others I can turn on for short periods.

Overall, my goal is to learn. The better I can understand how something works, the better I can do my job. Part of this is towards a personal project. I wanted to convert a 2D game from the 90s to a 3D Game and call it my own. It runs on Windows only right now, and destroys the resources. It has so many memory leaks, and HOGS cpu. We tested it on a Dual Xeon Processor server, rocking 32GB of RAM, and it ate 70% CPU, with 24GB of Memory consumed. This is just the Gate Server, Login, and the World Host (Gate is a "door" to the Login, login is the login, and the world host grants you access to the MapServers). But my knowledge isn't high enough for that project. Thus why I'm learning other things. BudMan has an idea of the volume of information I'm after, and in the time frame.

 

Edited

After I got my setup finished, I was going to look into building a backup host, it would serve strictly as a back up. Boot up at x day, at x time, for x time, and then shut down after that. Also, I make x amount of money, and I'm left with about $1200 left over every month. I'm supposed to be saving it, but once I get this built, along with my network, and my new desktop, I'll start saving.

 

Thats how I treated my money, now its all boring and sitting there doing nothing

 

As far as Hard Drives go, I've had nothing but failures. At work I had to slam the CEO because we just ordered seagates because they were "$20" cheaper and we've already had 7 fail. He said "we haven't had problems with seagates, thats not the problem, i want hard facts not hear say" and then I googled failure rate and the first thing i see is....

 

 

 

1. Age alone does not account for it

[Sikh]

fwiw, you can upgrade dell servers...they have the same flexability as building your own, if you do your research.

 

while the dell and hp servers like to have their branded drives in them (usually seagate or wd with their own firmware flashed on), they do accept other drives without their custom firmware.  They also accept crucial memory, and have pci based riser boards.  You can swap processors to get the fastest the board can handle or what you can afford.  So, I am not sure how much more flexibility you are looking for...perhaps you want to rip everything out and fit in a board from a main frame and run a large set of legacy tapes to access data....not sure where to go with this on how flexible you want it to be...but they are pretty flexible within reason.  

 

As far as your side note, windows will support more processors...however you will not be looking at the standard version if you want it to support more than 2...that would be datacenter.

 

At least in my experience with some of the older dell servers we have at work, the modified PCI riser is a PCI to PCI-X riser which is apparently an "intelligent" riser and a normal PCI riser doesnt fit in it. If I can get a picture, ill send you one, but I'm not kidding when I say it was a bitch to find a replacement riser and found out only can buy it through dell / eBay. We have some legacy equipment that uses PCI-X cards to accept data coming in from high definition lasers and cameras that scan pavement. The company that builds the product said the PCI-X card wont work in a PCI slot because it needs full bandwidth. We did put it in a PCI slot to see if that would work, nope. As soon as we started accepting data, it would start dropping frames and then either crash the application or the computer.

 

If dell's are now easier to work with and no proprietary ######, then sure go for it, but I would still build my own server, cheaper and you get to use whatever parts you want and rely on the company that makes the part for drivers and not Dell.

[sc302 Veteran]

I have never had to try to fit or make fit a size ten foot in a size 3 shoe...I just get a new shoe.   If the company makes me, I tell them flat out it can't be done and they have two choices...get something that works or don't, call me when they do.  I will gladly put that size 10 foot in that size 10 shoe. 

 

I have had issues with video cards in servers and the apps did not want to run properly or crash the servers...these were new servers with legacy apps...One of two things had to happen...they bought the right equipment to make the old apps work, it was cheaper than to try to upgrade the older app.

[Haggis Veteran]

[BinaryData]

 

[sinetheo]

Cloud? You can host it on Internet or use azure or Amazon for a monthly fee for cheaper. Amazon drive is available too

[BinaryData]

Cloud? You can host it on Internet or use azure or Amazon for a monthly fee for cheaper. Amazon drive is available too

Very true. I could do that, but the problem with that is; the lack of control. I have guidelines and rules I have to follow. They say they don't "care" what files are hosted there, but if enough complaints are given or a DMCA is dropped, they delete your crap without warning.

I've tried this path before, I used another cloud service for my project as a back up, a DMCA complaint was filed by the MPAA because I uploaded a song. My entire account was banned, and I lost a lot of data.

I'll follow what Haggis, BudMan, and others have said. I have far more control, and my stuff is "portable" per say.

[+BudMan MVC]

"DMCA complaint was filed by the MPAA because I uploaded a song"

 

I find this a little hard to believe - you must of had that available to share, etc.. Are we talking about building a esxi box so you can play with virtual machine, learn about IT stuff, networking, etc. etc..  Or are we talking about you sharing files with the planet?

 

If you want to share files - then get a seed box in another country.  You plan on serving up the same files off your home connection, guess what now your just going to loose your internet connection from your isp..

[BinaryData]

"DMCA complaint was filed by the MPAA because I uploaded a song"

 

I find this a little hard to believe - you must of had that available to share, etc.. Are we talking about building a esxi box so you can play with virtual machine, learn about IT stuff, networking, etc. etc..  Or are we talking about you sharing files with the planet?

 

If you want to share files - then get a seed box in another country.  You plan on serving up the same files off your home connection, guess what now your just going to loose your internet connection from your isp..

It was part of a video project for college. I'm not super bent about it, anything I download, I generally buy. Not just a single song, but the entire album. Music is like taste buds, over a course of time, it changes. What you liked 5 years ago, isn't necessarily what you like today.

Building ESXi box for VMs and learning IT stuff. I wasn't trying to become Google, My color spectrum is still stuck in Black/White

I don't share files, other than projects I'm working on. I'd rather not talk about my extra curricular activities. I feel they go strongly against forum rules, and I'd rather not have someone drop the ban hammer on my already beat head. I've had enough pain for one day.

So I have a question, when you guys talk about servers; Are you talking about Towers or Standalones? I've been trying to figure this out, and I've found a few Racks but I'm not sure. I listed a tower, and I believe Haggis did too, can standalones be used too?

Like this;

https://www.racksolutions.com/desktop-rack.html

[+BudMan MVC]

dude you wouldn't need a rack..  My N40L is tiny little box..  Sits on the floor in my computer room

 

Its a tiny box.. It uses like 50w

10.5" x 8.3" x 10.2"

 

Forget these 10-20K$ enterprise DC boxes your moving around at work..  You can do a lot with <$1K and tiny amount of space and power.

[BinaryData]

dude you wouldn't need a rack..  My N40L is tiny little box..  Sits on the floor in my computer room

 

Its a tiny box.. It uses like 50w

10.5" x 8.3" x 10.2"

 

Forget these 10-20K$ enterprise DC boxes your moving around at work..  You can do a lot with <$1K and tiny amount of space and power.

Haha. I wish I had that kind of money to toss around. My beard would be that of a Wizards!

No, I was just curious about it. I have a lot of space, it was more of an informational question. BudMan, do you EVER sleep? I swear you're a zombie!

[binaryzero]

As i mentioned earlier, a Dell tower server (any tower) would do you fine.

 

You're really over thinking this, this is a pretty straight forward exercise. 

 

Any modern day desktop could probably run ESXi fine. 

 

My suggestion would be a tower box for your VMs, and a NAS with some iSCSI targets for your files, or even VMs if you really wanted to learn how VMware works.

 

Really, the cool VMware stuff comes into play when you have multiple hosts with shared storage, things like HA and vMotion.

[+BudMan MVC]

Im always up early   But today granddaughter had a sleep over last night, taking her to see home today..

 

While the desktop rack looks slick, To be honest a small tower or even mini box like the size of microserver can hold a lot of stuff. Has 4 3.5" bays.. And the optical bay where the 5.25 is suppose to go can hold like 4 2.5 if you really wanted too.  I have my SSD there.

 

I really thinking about pulling the trigger on that supermicro d-1500 setup this summer, for that price point that seems amazing..  Its a tiny itx board.. Throw it a little box, and it going to be a screamer esxi host.  ###### if you had 2 of them could use the 10G interfaces for your vmotion.  Would love to get 10g going in the house - but the price point is still a bit high for my tastes..  I sure don't need it, but would be fun to play with at home.

[BinaryData]

Im always up early   But today granddaughter had a sleep over last night, taking her to see home today..

 

While the desktop rack looks slick, To be honest a small tower or even mini box like the size of microserver can hold a lot of stuff. Has 4 3.5" bays.. And the optical bay where the 5.25 is suppose to go can hold like 4 2.5 if you really wanted too.  I have my SSD there.

 

I really thinking about pulling the trigger on that supermicro d-1500 setup this summer, for that price point that seems amazing..  Its a tiny itx board.. Throw it a little box, and it going to be a screamer esxi host.  ###### if you had 2 of them could use the 10G interfaces for your vmotion.  Would love to get 10g going in the house - but the price point is still a bit high for my tastes..  I sure don't need it, but would be fun to play with at home.

I'm thinking in the same direction, actually. The fact that you're so excited over it, makes me laugh. It's like the first time I fixed a PC on my own.

 

 

Well, I'll go with a tower. I'll look at some other things too.