PC for Vmware - 500 Budget

WorkingLunch

Hi, any chance of some help with this.

was just posting in the IT certs forum, hoping to get set up with a system to complete some certs. Theres nothing second hand that stands out apart from this on donedeal -

http://www.donedeal.ie/for-sale/computers/2945194

I know they are upgrade-able to 8gig which would suit me fine, anyone know if they are a good system?

deceit

WorkingLunch wrote: »

Hi, any chance of some help with this.

was just posting in the IT certs forum, hoping to get set up with a system to complete some certs. Theres nothing second hand that stands out apart from this on donedeal -

http://www.donedeal.ie/for-sale/computers/2945194

I know they are upgrade-able to 8gig which would suit me fine, anyone know if they are a good system?

That machine would not be the best suited for vmware. You could build something newer that would be much better imo.

WorkingLunch

why would you think that it has a quad core processor with VT ? I was thinking ram might be the issue, but maybe something like virtual box might be a little bit easier. Not sure if it supports server 2008 R2 though..

deconduo

You can do much better for €500:

Item|Price
Total build cost: €495.60 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i5-2320 Box, LGA1155|€156.04
ASRock H61DE/S3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€59.15
2 x 8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€31.32
Crucial M4 128GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5")|€149.09
BitFenix Merc Beta|€31.61
Antec BasiQ VP350|€37.07

deceit

deconduo's rig would be much better suited to the job. Then just go onto adverts and pick up two cheap drives to run in raid to put your vm's on as i'm sure they will take up a fair bit of space.
The gpu's would be just chewing through your esb bill if your just running vm's on it.
I have an i7, 24gb esx server and I only run a 6600gt card in it. I will pick up and even smaller card soon and run 18 vm's on it without issue.
I will say though if your going to create alot of vm's fast disks are really important.

WorkingLunch

Thanks for that, the XPS has raid capabilities and as far as I know SSD running vmware can cause serious fragmentation unless there has been an update to them?. I used to run vm's on my old work laptop and had to replace the SSD drive due to it being killed by vmware.

So I was thinking of setting up the XPS in a raid 10 config with four 150gig 10k RPM disks.? Its purely for educational purposes so that config will be wiped at the end.

deconduo

WorkingLunch wrote: »

Thanks for that, the XPS has raid capabilities and as far as I know SSD running vmware can cause serious fragmentation unless there has been an update to them?. I used to run vm's on my old work laptop and had to replace the SSD drive due to it being killed by vmware.

So I was thinking of setting up the XPS in a raid 10 config with four 150gig 10k RPM disks.? Its purely for educational purposes so that config will be wiped at the end.

I've never heard of that problem before, in fact SSDs are meant to be fragmented. Its defragmenting them that causes degredation. Do you have any more information on it, I couldn't find anything by googling it.

WorkingLunch

It was running vmware workstation and a server image on the same drive as the OS, not sure exactly but I think your not supposed to do that.. I can't remember but it was something to do with the SSD disk erasing and writing to blocks unnecessarily which killed it, it ran dog slow anyway but this was when SSD first came out ?

Kensington

WorkingLunch wrote: »

It was running vmware workstation and a server image on the same drive as the OS, not sure exactly but I think your not supposed to do that.. I can't remember but it was something to do with the SSD disk erasing and writing to blocks unnecessarily which killed it, it ran dog slow anyway but this was when SSD first came out ?

Did you turn off prefetch/superfetch and disable disk defragmenter scheduled tasks both on your host AND guest OS's?

Cuddlesworth

WorkingLunch wrote: »

It was running vmware workstation and a server image on the same drive as the OS, not sure exactly but I think your not supposed to do that.. I can't remember but it was something to do with the SSD disk erasing and writing to blocks unnecessarily which killed it, it ran dog slow anyway but this was when SSD first came out ?

Hi again. Big difference between first gen SSD's and the current crop. VM's would do a lot of random writes, something the early drives had major issues with compared to now which would explain the slowness. The rig listed in the IT certs forum is perfect for the job. Upgradable to 32gig of memory with a six core proc is perfect for VM's. The extra two cores would be preferable to the grunt of the Intel I5. I'd bump up the SSD capacity before I'd do any of that.

WorkingLunch wrote: »

four 150gig 10k RPM disks

Waste of money. IOPS is far more important for your situation. And we are talking about the difference of 600 compared to 60,000. And no, I'm not kidding.

I actually sat down and decided I was going to get that system myself, with the 32gigs and a 250 gig M4. Was better and cheaper to run then my current rig.

BigEejit

I found when running 6 VM's that disk IO was the bottleneck, so I ended up with 3 x 320gb/7200/16mb cache drives (which were really cheap at the time, 30 euro each or so) and put two VM's on each.

WorkingLunch

shh !! Only seen that one on the certs forum has 6 cores, yes deff going to order that, be crazy to buy anything else.. Ok about ordering from that site, I got rid of any credit cards etc ages ago, I presume they don't do "laser" but I notice they do bank transfers, thats fine anyone ever ordered with them by bank transfer.

Also just to keep costs down, would it be easy to install vsxi on ubuntu server, save me having to buy a licence for windows 7. Might be a big ask for me being a noob with Linux..

Thanks all for the help with this.. excellent forum.

Markd250

I would order a superflower amazon PSU, maybe the 450W, instead of the one listed in that thread - just for safety and longevity!

Cuddlesworth

WorkingLunch wrote: »

shh !! Only seen that one on the certs forum has 6 cores, yes deff going to order that, be crazy to buy anything else.. Ok about ordering from that site, I got rid of any credit cards etc ages ago, I presume they don't do "laser" but I notice they do bank transfers, thats fine anyone ever ordered with them by bank transfer.

They are completely safe to do a bank transfer with. Its the only payment option they take. With 3% fees on credit cards, I can't blame them.

WorkingLunch wrote: »

Also just to keep costs down, would it be easy to install vsxi on ubuntu server, save me having to buy a licence for windows 7. Might be a big ask for me being a noob with Linux..

Thanks all for the help with this.. excellent forum.

ESXi is a hyper-visor. Its best placed before any OS to work effectively and will render the machine useless as a direct input device. Everything is done remotely with a client on another machine. It will in essence turn the desktop into a host box for VMs to remote desktop into. Nothing more.

WorkingLunch

Yes getting my hypervisors mixed up! I'm going to use my desktop to access the vm's using the vsphere client. Really looking forward to kicking the build off now.

WorkingLunch

Finally got paid and ordered this today, bank says it will take 5 days for the order to go through, so just have to play the waiting game, it should probably take 3 weeks for the gear to be delivered, is that the normal wait time for the site, also do I need to get hdd connections, and power cables or do they come included with the PSU and case?

WorkingLunch

This is booting now as far as the looking for the OS, I'm in the process of sticking vsxi on to a bootable USB drive using the hp boot disk app...

Do I need to format the SSD drive before I install an OS ?

Just found this excellent tutorial for creating a vsxi boot drives.

http://www.satheesh.net/2011/08/29/how-to-make-a-bootable-vmware-vsphere-5-usb-installation-media/

Hope it works, the hp one didn't..

WorkingLunch

Another handy site for those installing vsxi 5

http://www.omniweb.com/wordpress/?p=304

WorkingLunch

*Warm fuzzy feeling*

That was really simple, I don't think I've build a PC from scratch in almost 15 odd years and I only kicked off the build just before lunch! ok so I had to grab my old video card and a couple of network cables I had about but that was so easy.

I'm now connected to the vmware host and downloading the client..

Thanks to all for the help in h/w and s/w recommendations...