HP proliant DL385 g1

Cork24

Hi i am currently bidding on
a HP DL385 Server to Run Server 2008 with vCenter 5.1 Server

I am also bidding on a DL 380 G5 which its unsupported but still will run esxi 5.1.


i am wondering does anyone know will vCenter 5.1 run on a DL385 G1 Server ?

i can use my old Computer to run just as a AD and DNS server. which shouldn't take much to run.

vibe666

it will run, but as of v5.1 it's off the VMware HCL as of v5.1 (it was there for v5.0 though) so you're going to be out of luck as far as support goes with VMware same as with the DL385.

Cork24

I seen that it VMware support it under 5.0 but not under 5.1, i have heard some people have then running with 5.1

I was looking at a dell server, maybe after Christmas i will buy a one good dell Server and have my hole lab under that one server in a virtual lab,

which i not hoping for.

Kensington

Is it just a lab? Would you not stick with a reasonable desktop PC, or something like a ProLiant M40L microserver in that case?

Reason being, rack mount servers tend to be noisy as the assumption is they'll sit in a rack for their whole life, in an already noisy comms room, and not on top of or under someone's desk, so cooling noise is not really considered a factor in their design.

As for the DL380 G5, those things sound like a jet engine at take off during POST!

Cork24

Yeah it's for labs I am going to study for the VCP 510 exam then onto the VCP-DT exam

In between then I will watch the 3 MCSA train signal videos and take the exams for the MCSA

so was looking at a good server to hold at lest

One physical windows 7 OS

On top of that OS have

3 esxi servers

2 windows servers one acting as a AD DNS server and the other running as my vsphere server

And to be able at lest run win 98 or 2000 under the esxi servers

vibe666

you don't want to run ESXi on top of Windows, not if you want any kind of performance out of it.

you'll be better off keeping a PC/Laptop to work from and just putting ESXi onto the server you plan on buying and using vTardis to layer everything else on top of that.

Have a look at this video for an idea of what you can do with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqog2VxBX84

swampgas

If you stick ESXi 5.0 on the server you can still run ESXi 5.1 in VMs to play with 5.1.

But if you're aiming for VCP5 (or VCP5-DCA as it's now known) bear in mind you don't need to know 5.1, 5.0 is sufficient. That said, there are some big changes in 5.1, such as the new Web Client, so there is something to be said for playing around with that for real world experience.

Cork24

vibe666 wrote: »

you don't want to run ESXi on top of Windows, not if you want any kind of performance out of it.

What i would like and what i can afford are two different Things,

i would like to have 2 physical Servers running ESXi and 1 PC running two Windows 2008 Servers one for DNS and the other for vSphere.

But what i could afford is one mid range Tower Server install Windows 7 and on top of that 2 Esxi Servers and 2 Windows Servers..

I have watch both Train Signal and CBT Nugget vSphere videos, i have gotten my hands on the Student Lab Manual and have work away with this, i have

Virtual vSphere Lab running in my Computer in Work. which works away but just cant install any host OS on esxi Server

vibe666

Cork24 wrote: »

What i would like and what i can afford are two different Things

i should probably rephrase that a bit.

unless you absolutely NEED to have a physical windows server (and i don't think you do, given what you've described your needs as), it is a waste of resources to have a windows server with ESXi running on top of it, unless you don't have a any other laptop or desktop PC to run your vsphere client from.

once you have ESXi installed and a basic config (literally just hostname and IP), all you need connected to the box is power and network cables, no need for monitor, keyboard or mouse at all so unless you really don't have any other hardware to run your main OS from, so you really shouldn't need windows on your host server.

once you do have it up and running, you just manage it via the viclient on any laptop/desktop and you're sorted.

Cork24

What I have on my work laptop,

Is windows 7 to do my office work on that I have VMware workstation 9

Inside workstation I have 3 esxi 5.1 serves two windows 2008 servers

My 3 esxi are in a cluster,

One of my servers is a DNS and Active Domain

My other one is where my vsphere server and web server is installed,


What I am looking for is some cheap server which can hold two processors.

Which will allow me to run a vsphere lab

I don't want one esxi server and windows severs installed on top of that in my eyes its bad network design, so does train signal.

Plus if something goes wrong with that esxi my whole lab is gone. If I install every thing on top of one esxi

vibe666

you're missing the point entirely.

either way you've still got one physical server and if it goes bang and you haven't been taking any backups they are going to be just as gone in esx as they would have been under windows, the only difference being the base OS that your virtual ESX hosts are going to be sitting on top of, and for that base OS to be windows is a waste of resources that would be better utilised running ESX on bare metal.

i've already posted a video showing what you can do with vTardis which is a great example of running virtual esxi servers on top of a physical esx server (which you don't appear to have watched?), but you don't even need to do that to get yourself up and running.

in reality, you already have everything you need running on your laptop, you just need to v2v it from there to your physical host when you've got it, so your virtual esx lab cluster will be running on a physical esx host instead of a windows host.

any critical VM's can be run directly on the physical esxi server so they will benefit from the performance of it, but anything in the lab environment can be within your virtual cluster.

also, if your host goes titsup, you can mount the datastore(s) in another esx host and re-import them in a couple of minutes, so you're not going to lose anything unless you lose the disks, although if that was the case they would be lost whatever the base OS was if you aren't taking any backups (which you should be).

for the purposes of giving you this advice, i'm not new at this. my advice is given as a VMware VCP with 18 years working in IT for 3 of the top 5 IT services companies in the world, with 12 months spent implementing the largest vmware project in Ireland (at the time, it's since been beaten) and the last 3 years as a VMware specialist for the biggest IT services company in Ireland, which gives me a pretty good idea of what i'm talking about.

Kinet1c

There's also autolabs from Veeam. Don't buy a server. Go nested and spend some money on some ram and an SSD, job done.

vibe666

another option, if you really wanted physical hardware without too much cost, go with a 3 of the HP Microservers at €105 each after cashback and use the money you'll save for RAM and SSD's for those. all in, you'd have yourself a 2 server esxi cluster and another for shared storage for less than you'll pay for one single server if you take into account ram and storage.