up-to-date recommendation for a home ESXi 5.1 server?

Non-Technical Threads Chatting over the Back Fence
1

Hi,

a similar thread was here end of last year:

From: “Joseph Marton” jmarton@no-mx.forums.novell.com
Subject: What processor for a home VMware server?
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 04:48:11 GMT
Message-ID: f4Bus.4$IL5.3@kozak.provo.novell.com
Lines: 7
[snip]

I’m planning to have a new ESXi at home for just testing VMs and my
“home file & media” server. On new hardware, main aspect is low power
consumption, so I was wondering, if a box with internal disks or some
iSCSI capable NAS, that will power down the disks during idle times
(e.g. QNAP) would be the better choice.

Perhaps somebody has done this lately, pointing out recommendations and
pitfalls to avoid?

Tx, regards, Rudi.

PS: the old ESXi at home is a retired, reused old Proliant, consuming
faaaar to much power…

2

Rudolf Thilo;2274372 Wrote:[color=blue]

Hi,

a similar thread was here end of last year:

From: “Joseph Marton” jmarton@no-mx.forums.novell.com
Subject: What processor for a home VMware server?
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 04:48:11 GMT
Message-ID: f4Bus.4$IL5.3@kozak.provo.novell.com
Lines: 7
[snip]

I’m planning to have a new ESXi at home for just testing VMs and my
“home file & media” server. On new hardware, main aspect is low power
consumption, so I was wondering, if a box with internal disks or some
iSCSI capable NAS, that will power down the disks during idle times
(e.g. QNAP) would be the better choice.

Perhaps somebody has done this lately, pointing out recommendations
and
pitfalls to avoid?

Tx, regards, Rudi.

PS: the old ESXi at home is a retired, reused old Proliant, consuming
faaaar to much power…[/color]

Look for:
vmware whitebox

Lots of useful info. Most of it is semi-old and ESXi 5.0/5.1 is more
tolerant of what it’ll work with.

There’s some articles about using various NAS (freeNAS), etc.

The cheaest QNAP/NetGear NAS that’s CERTIFIED for VMware will run you
around $400+ and then the cost of the disks themselves.
But you’ll still need a whitebox/server.

–
The opinions expressed are my own.
Check out my OES2 Guides:
Installing OES2 SP2:
http://www.novell.com/communities/node/11600/oes2-sp2-installation-guide
Upgrading to OES2 with ID Transfer:
http://www.novell.com/communities/node/11601/oes2-sp2-migration-guide-transfer-id-scenarios
GroupWise Migration with OES2 ID Transfer:
http://www.novell.com/communities/node/11602/groupwise-migration-netware-oes2-sp2-transfer-id

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3

Rudolf Thilo wrote:
[color=blue]

Hi,

a similar thread was here end of last year:

From: “Joseph Marton” jmarton@no-mx.forums.novell.com
Subject: What processor for a home VMware server?[/color]

The box I wound up building as outlined in that thread is still
chugging away. I recently upgraded it from 16GB to 32GB so I could run
more VMs on it. I’ve been happy with it.

–
Does this washcloth smell like chloroform?

4

they’re not the gruntiest boxes, but i’ve seen plenty of people using hp
microservers as vmware boxes without any major drama’s at all, these
were the old nl3x and nl4x models - not so sure about the new gen8 based
ones though

the old nl series were based on a low power AMD chip similar to an atom
and the gen8 I believe is based on a celeron processor

–
gleach1

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5

Rudi,
[color=blue]

I’m planning to have a new ESXi at home for just testing VMs and my
“home file & media” server. On new hardware, main aspect is low power
consumption, so I was wondering, if a box with internal disks or some
iSCSI capable NAS, that will power down the disks during idle times
(e.g. QNAP) would be the better choice.[/color]

If you’re not averse to spending some money - search eBay for C6100. You
get 4 * Dual CPU nodes in a 2U rack mount form. Build a complete ESX
cluster in a box, along with a storage server. Can have (for example) 3

  • ESX + Storage, 2 * ESX + Storage + vCenter etc. They can be picked up
    for under $700 each - generally with 96GB+ RAM and 8 * Xeon CPUs.

For storage I like OpenIndianna + NappIt. Actually have some customers
using those in production - impressive performance.

H.

6

Regards, Rudi.

Thanks for the suggestions to all of you.

The main aspect I want to take care of is the overall average power
consumption for mostly idle VMs.

One kWh is about 28 Euro-Cent here in Germany (including all costs), so
spending some bucks extra for low power optimized HW is a good idea in
the long run.

Regards, Rudi.

power energy/a costs €/a costs $/a

50 W 438 kWh/a 122,64 € $159,43
75 W 657 kWh/a 183,96 € $239,15
100 W 876 kWh/a 245,28 € $318,86
125 W 1095 kWh/a 306,60 € $398,58
150 W 1314 kWh/a 367,92 € $478,30
175 W 1533 kWh/a 429,24 € $558,01
200 W 1752 kWh/a 490,56 € $637,73
225 W 1971 kWh/a 551,88 € $717,44
250 W 2190 kWh/a 613,20 € $797,16
275 W 2409 kWh/a 674,52 € $876,88
300 W 2628 kWh/a 735,84 € $956,59
325 W 2847 kWh/a 797,16 € $1.036,31
350 W 3066 kWh/a 858,48 € $1.116,02
375 W 3285 kWh/a 919,80 € $1.195,74
400 W 3504 kWh/a 981,12 € $1.275,46
425 W 3723 kWh/a 1.042,44 € $1.355,17
450 W 3942 kWh/a 1.103,76 € $1.434,89
475 W 4161 kWh/a 1.165,08 € $1.514,60
500 W 4380 kWh/a 1.226,40 € $1.594,32

7

It’s not used as home server and a bit expensive for a home server, but
I am quite impressed by my production HP ML 350p Gen8 server, which has
an average power consumption of only 130 W with 2 Xeon 6-core
processors, fully redundant power supplies and fans, 8 internal SAS
10k rpm and 15k rpm drives, 8 network interfaces and several other
add-ons.

But if only you personally are using these VMs, the utmost power saving
you get, if you power your server only up, if you need it. Assuming 40
hours work per week, some weeks out of home on vacation, some hours
sleep per day gets you easliy down to at least 50% power consumption of
a 24h/7d working server. And you will have to disconnect the server/PC
physically from the mains via an own mains switch to get down to zero
power consumption during power off - the power consumption of a server
in standby (for NICs and ILO management etc) can be more than 10W,
which I find quite bad if you really power down the server to save
energy - if you just power down servers for maintenance and
reconfiguration, that’s of course irrelevant.

W. Prindl

Rudolf Thilo wrote:
[color=blue]

Regards, Rudi.

Thanks for the suggestions to all of you.

The main aspect I want to take care of is the overall average power
consumption for mostly idle VMs.

One kWh is about 28 Euro-Cent here in Germany (including all costs),
so spending some bucks extra for low power optimized HW is a good
idea in the long run.

Regards, Rudi.

power energy/a costs €/a costs $/a

50 W 438 kWh/a 122,64 € $159,43
75 W 657 kWh/a 183,96 € $239,15
100 W 876 kWh/a 245,28 € $318,86
125 W 1095 kWh/a 306,60 € $398,58
150 W 1314 kWh/a 367,92 € $478,30
175 W 1533 kWh/a 429,24 € $558,01
200 W 1752 kWh/a 490,56 € $637,73
225 W 1971 kWh/a 551,88 € $717,44
250 W 2190 kWh/a 613,20 € $797,16
275 W 2409 kWh/a 674,52 € $876,88
300 W 2628 kWh/a 735,84 € $956,59
325 W 2847 kWh/a 797,16 € $1.036,31
350 W 3066 kWh/a 858,48 € $1.116,02
375 W 3285 kWh/a 919,80 € $1.195,74
400 W 3504 kWh/a 981,12 € $1.275,46
425 W 3723 kWh/a 1.042,44 € $1.355,17
450 W 3942 kWh/a 1.103,76 € $1.434,89
475 W 4161 kWh/a 1.165,08 € $1.514,60
500 W 4380 kWh/a 1.226,40 € $1.594,32[/color]

8

W_Prindl;2276233 Wrote:[color=blue]

It’s not used as home server and a bit expensive for a home server, but
I am quite impressed by my production HP ML 350p Gen8 server, which
has
an average power consumption of only 130 W with 2 Xeon 6-core
processors, fully redundant power supplies and fans, 8 internal SAS
10k rpm and 15k rpm drives, 8 network interfaces and several other
add-ons.

But if only you personally are using these VMs, the utmost power
saving
you get, if you power your server only up, if you need it. Assuming 40
hours work per week, some weeks out of home on vacation, some hours
sleep per day gets you easliy down to at least 50% power consumption
of
a 24h/7d working server. And you will have to disconnect the server/PC
physically from the mains via an own mains switch to get down to zero
power consumption during power off - the power consumption of a server
in standby (for NICs and ILO management etc) can be more than 10W,
which I find quite bad if you really power down the server to save
energy - if you just power down servers for maintenance and
reconfiguration, that’s of course irrelevant.

W. Prindl

Rudolf Thilo wrote:
[color=green]

Regards, Rudi.

Thanks for the suggestions to all of you.

The main aspect I want to take care of is the overall average power
consumption for mostly idle VMs.

One kWh is about 28 Euro-Cent here in Germany (including all costs),
so spending some bucks extra for low power optimized HW is a good
idea in the long run.

Regards, Rudi.

power energy/a costs €/a costs $/a

50 W 438 kWh/a 122,64 € $159,43
75 W 657 kWh/a 183,96 € $239,15
100 W 876 kWh/a 245,28 € $318,86
125 W 1095 kWh/a 306,60 € $398,58
150 W 1314 kWh/a 367,92 € $478,30
175 W 1533 kWh/a 429,24 € $558,01
200 W 1752 kWh/a 490,56 € $637,73
225 W 1971 kWh/a 551,88 € $717,44
250 W 2190 kWh/a 613,20 € $797,16
275 W 2409 kWh/a 674,52 € $876,88
300 W 2628 kWh/a 735,84 € $956,59
325 W 2847 kWh/a 797,16 € $1.036,31
350 W 3066 kWh/a 858,48 € $1.116,02
375 W 3285 kWh/a 919,80 € $1.195,74
400 W 3504 kWh/a 981,12 € $1.275,46
425 W 3723 kWh/a 1.042,44 € $1.355,17
450 W 3942 kWh/a 1.103,76 € $1.434,89
475 W 4161 kWh/a 1.165,08 € $1.514,60
500 W 4380 kWh/a 1.226,40 € $1.594,32[/color][/color]

Typically VMWare has you modify the BIOS to not do any power-saving,
although I suppose you could “sleep” the guest VM’s.

–
The opinions expressed are my own.
Check out my OES2 Guides:
Installing OES2 SP2:
http://www.novell.com/communities/node/11600/oes2-sp2-installation-guide
Upgrading to OES2 with ID Transfer:
http://www.novell.com/communities/node/11601/oes2-sp2-migration-guide-transfer-id-scenarios
GroupWise Migration with OES2 ID Transfer:
http://www.novell.com/communities/node/11602/groupwise-migration-netware-oes2-sp2-transfer-id

kjhurni’s Profile: https://forums.novell.com/member.php?userid=734
View this thread: https://forums.novell.com/showthread.php?t=468490