Desktop for ESXi homelab

itguy6 · 2016-08-16T11:52:54.000Z

Spiceheads need your advise. Building a new desktop for ESXi home lab. Need to play with features involving Clustering, Vmotion, DRS ,HA and Hyper -V.Currently i have a desktop( 5 years old) i3 with 16 gb RAM with SSD’s and 3 LAN ports. Running VCSA on it alone consumes 8 Gb. So decided to invest in new pc. Please see specs and comment

MSI B150M BAZOOKA Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ( will put in additional intel dual port lan cards) and memory can be expanded upto 64Gb. Is this motherboard decent enough to run NSX at a later stage from a learning point.
Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (CAS 13). I am hoping CAS 13 is better than CAS15.
BitFenix Phenom M Midnight Black MicroATX Mini Tower Case.
EVGA 430W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply
BitFenix Phenom M Midnight Black MicroATX Mini Tower Case
Samsung SSD 850 EVO - 500 Gb -1

Is it necessary to get a cooler for this pc. Thanks

kz650 · 2016-08-16T12:00:03.000Z

you’re better off picking some older xeons for dirt cheep and a board with ddr3 ecc, used, and you have an awesome playground for half the money.

I would even scour the craigslist for used servers for that matter.

Rod-IT · 2016-08-16T12:02:26.000Z

Since it is a lab reduce your VCSA memory down. It will get away with 4 just fine.

The memory CAS isn’t really an issue, I wouldn’t worry about this so much.

Memory is key vs disk IO and CPU last

Rod-IT · 2016-08-16T12:04:40.000Z

In order to test DRS and HA though you are going to need shared storage.

Not sure you need to test this either though as it is a proven technology and works as intended

jeffnewman · 2016-08-16T12:05:11.000Z

As Pictuelle said, you can find a retired/off-lease/refurbished real enterprise class server with amazing stuffings (dual Xeons, 64GB or more, etc.) for next to nothing compared to what you’ll spend on building a white box host.

I second Craigslist. Also eBay. HPs are dirt cheap. Dells, a hair more. Rack servers much cheaper than towers, if you can even find towers. The rack form may be a no starter for you, but they really can go anywhere. One Spicehead has his servers under the stairs.

itguy6 · 2016-08-16T12:06:22.000Z

Power and space are limited. So i am thinking for spending the money now, rather than pay extra for power and less noise.

martinc · 2016-08-16T12:10:05.000Z

also get one of these: Amazon.co.uk

and install esxi on a usb stick rather than on the SSD

I would recommend gigabyte motherboards for esxi not had any issues with mine Gigabyte Z170M-D3H

jeffnewman · 2016-08-16T12:14:59.000Z

Understand about power and noise. Last words on the subject: A Dell R710 server (a 2U box) won’t be heard if it’s on the other side of the room, which may or may not be true of a tower PC next to or under your desk. The R710 will use less than 200W of power. You can get iDRAC out-of-band management with a Dell or iLO with an HP. Very nice to have.

The R710 is an 11th Generation Dell server. The specs on 12th Generation servers (power-wise) are considerably better.

There are several discussions regarding power usage and enterprise servers for home labs here on Spiceworks.

Okay. Done.

itguy6 · 2016-08-16T12:15:44.000Z

sorry i don’t want to thread off, but what is the advantage of installing esxi on a usb stick rather than on the host itself. what is the norm out in enterprises and data centers.

Rod-IT · 2016-08-16T12:19:33.000Z

USB stick or SD card is the best practise boot partition for ESXi.

Once booted very little activity

jeffnewman · 2016-08-16T12:19:48.000Z

Enterprise servers now have bootable SD card slots (some of them mirrored for redundancy) and/or internal USB ports for the purpose of installing ESXi and booting it without using precious disk space (especially since many systems come without local storage).

Running ESXi from SD or USB is a best practice.

itguy6 · 2016-08-16T13:31:25.000Z

Still not sure to go for whitebox or R710.

Rod-IT · 2016-08-16T13:39:41.000Z

Whiteboxes can introduce incompatibilities, but are often cheaper.

Servers from the HCL are often always going to work.

If you go whitebox, make sure they have intel NICs

essjae · 2016-08-16T13:41:33.000Z

Whitebox should be fine. I’ve run whitebox ESXi test/lab servers for years.

The only thing you need to check out is NIC and RAID card compatibility, those can kill your cheap build quickly. A lot of RAID cards are supported, but you need to manually add the drivers to ESXi post install or create a custom ISO.

You could use your old PC as shared storage with FreeNAS or similar. Or you could go with VMware Workstation and make everything virtual on your new PC, you can have multiple ESXi servers, shared storage VM, all in one with enough RAM and SSDs.

itguy6 · 2016-08-16T13:57:37.000Z

Thank you. I will have to buy one of these IBM 39Y6128 INTEL Pro/1000 PT Dual Port GIGABIT NIC PCI-E CARD to make sure it works on ESXi

jeffnewman · 2016-08-16T16:28:22.000Z

Rod-IT:

Whiteboxes can introduce incompatibilities, but are often cheaper.

Servers from the HCL are often always going to work.

If you go whitebox, make sure they have intel NICs

As an aside, congratulations on making pure Capsaicin, Rod! One of only a handful here.

@rod-it

Rod-IT · 2016-08-16T16:30:42.000Z

JeffNew1213:

Rod-IT:

Whiteboxes can introduce incompatibilities, but are often cheaper.

Servers from the HCL are often always going to work.

If you go whitebox, make sure they have intel NICs

As an aside, congratulations on making pure Capsaicin, Rod! One of only a handful here.

7 of us total

A Q&A with Rod-IT, Spiceworks' newest Pure Capsaicin! Spiceworks Originals

Born in London and raised in the northwest of England, Rod McGarrigle ( @rod-it ) will tell you he never thought he’d get into IT. “I really wanted to get into robotic engineering,” he says. “Unfortunately, I was the only one who wanted to do it, so the school cut the course.” The closest course Rod could find was IT, so he signed up. A distinction held by only six other SpiceHeads — @scottalanmiller , @davison , @akp982 , @robdunn , @billkindle , and @peter — the mantle of Pure Capsaici…

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1772571-new-pure-capsaicin

johnkenny · 2016-08-23T15:40:01.000Z

Have you had a look on eBay at Dell servers r710s very cheap to pick up and if you look hard you can find ones with dual hex core xeons. Plus you can add lots of memory in one of those. Also you get 4 on board nics, but I will say don’t get one with a 6/i perc, look for an h200 or h700 perc so you get sata /sas 6gbps. Also try to find one with an enterprise idrac licence for remote console access. Even with all the extras it will be cheaper than most low / mid end desktops and I out perform them.