Best Ever SOHO VM Server

[franferri]

Why don't consider to create a video about create the best cheap esxi server ever, the new Atom platform and the cheapest equivalent xeon will work good.

There is a lot of people working from home, or just freelances that ask me sometimes about this.

 

A lot of Ram is gonna be a must, and internal SSD's + external NAS are very common too.

This will rock a lot!

 

Thanks for your job guys!

[Sunshine1868]

You could also use Citrix's XenServer. (if your daily driver is a linux box)

ESXi requires windows for their management utility, while XenServer has a Linux-based management utility in addition to their windows util (just incase anybody here is running linux). The free linux manager is called OpenXenManager.

 

Just an extra thought for another free BMHypervisor

[KuJoe]

Go grab a Dell R610 or R710, they are amazing in terms of performance, power usage, and quietness. I keep mine in data centers but when I build them at home they are more quiet than my desktop (which I built specifically to be quiet).

[Sunshine1868]

19 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Go grab a Dell R610 or R710, they are amazing in terms of performance, power usage, and quietness. I keep mine in data centers but when I build them at home they are more quiet than my desktop (which I built specifically to be quiet).

Plus you can pick a refurbished Dell PowerEdge 710 up from eBay for only a few hundred bucks (with AMAZING specs dual Xeons, 32GB RAM)

[KuJoe]

9 minutes ago, Sunshine1868 said:

Plus you can pick a refurbished Dell PowerEdge 710 up from eBay for only a few hundred bucks (with AMAZING specs dual Xeons, 32GB RAM)

Exactly! Dirt cheap for a server with that kind of performance. We fill them up with SSDs and quite a bit more RAM than 32GB for our clients, but for my personal build I have 6x 300GB 15K SAS drives, 24GB of RAM, and 2x X5650s running ESXi 5.5 (installed on an internal USB drive) along with a few TBs of NFS storage.

[Sunshine1868]

1 minute ago, KuJoe said:

Exactly! Dirt cheap for a server with that kind of performance. 

You really can't beat it, unless you find one in a dumpster somewhere, there is no better deal.

[Blake]

10 hours ago, Sunshine1868 said:

You could also use Citrix's XenServer. (if your daily driver is a linux box)

ESXi requires windows for their management utility, while XenServer has a Linux-based management utility in addition to their windows util (just incase anybody here is running linux). The free linux manager is called OpenXenManager.

 

Just an extra thought for another free BMHypervisor

Not with ESXi 6.0, it's all web based now (you deploy a Linux application server to host the website for you). 

 

In saying that.... I have used the website, i'll stick with 5.5 if you don''t mind.

[Sunshine1868]

13 hours ago, Blake said:

Not with ESXi 6.0, it's all web based now (you deploy a Linux application server to host the website for you). 

 

In saying that.... I have used the website, i'll stick with 5.5 if you don''t mind.

You can't deploy that linux VM without the windows utility though. To add VMs to the Host, you need a windows hypervisor to start.

and remember, not everybody's computer has that virus....

[Mikensan]

Linux-kvm is a nice alternative as well, it is what unRaid uses if I'm not mistaken. I'm using a Dell C1100 - also very quiet and was cheap. Only downside i've come to find out is a lot of C1100s are custom builds from customer requests so they do not have service tags and their motherboards may be slightly different (making BIOS updates a nightmare).

[KuJoe]

9 hours ago, Mikensan said:

Linux-kvm is a nice alternative as well, it is what unRaid uses if I'm not mistaken. I'm using a Dell C1100 - also very quiet and was cheap. Only downside i've come to find out is a lot of C1100s are custom builds from customer requests so they do not have service tags and their motherboards may be slightly different (making BIOS updates a nightmare).

C1100s are OK (I think I have 2 or 3 of them going on Craigslist soon) but they use as much power than an R610, hold less drives than an R610, only have a single power supply, and uses IPMI instead of the iDRAC6 (HUGE SECURITY EXPLOITS!!!!!). Of course, if you're using them at home this doesn't matter to you unless you need more hard drives. I also am not sure if the C1100 has an internal SD card/USB port like the R610/R710 has, I like installing ESXi on a thumb drive, making a copy of it, and booting off the thumb drive and being able to make a clone if the thumb drive dies.

[Mikensan]

1 hour ago, KuJoe said:

C1100s are OK (I think I have 2 or 3 of them going on Craigslist soon) but they use as much power than an R610, hold less drives than an R610, only have a single power supply, and uses IPMI instead of the iDRAC6 (HUGE SECURITY EXPLOITS!!!!!). Of course, if you're using them at home this doesn't matter to you unless you need more hard drives. I also am not sure if the C1100 has an internal SD card/USB port like the R610/R710 has, I like installing ESXi on a thumb drive, making a copy of it, and booting off the thumb drive and being able to make a clone if the thumb drive dies.

Right on all fronts, and you cannot update the IPMI on these custom C1100s easily - lot of people bricking their servers. No SD/USB headers on the motherboard I received, so I have a USB drive sticking out the arse. Measured my C1100 sitting at 120w (2x CPUs) - that what you're seeing as well? Majority of my VMs run off my freenas via iSCSI, with a couple running off a SSD on the C1100. I bought mine specifically because it was 1u with 3.5" bays though the point is moot now with my NAS and the SSD in it.

 

Dollar for Dollar, I would go for the R710/R610 as well.