Open Source Home VM Server help and advise

Something like this plus the onboard realtek one if it works ok? I'll only need 2 as it will go out to a gigabit switch.

 

I've not had much luck with onboard Realtek NIC's in ESXi

 

you can get intel dual nic cards - I would do that over the realtek. i'd second what sas has said above.

 

Cost is a bit much though for the dual. (you could go second hand though)

My realtek works fine with ESX... but then it was one of the factors for why I choose the board. Still.... I need another intel nic. (I've not been separating my management traffic...)

The card you've posted PegasusM is exactly the one I've been using in mine and it works a charm.

 

I found a second hand but unused dual intel NIC that will do nicely.

 

Very nice. I need one of those bad boys myself.

 

http://www.lambda-tek.com/39Y6126-I...3M-REFURBISHED-~cs/B896473&origin=gbaseGB19.8

This be about the cheapest one I know of

 

I found one for half that:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/111215218494?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

 

oh wow that is cheap, same chip on both as well. Good find! I will buy one just for the drawer at that price.

 

Check your hardware with the compatability database provided by vmware before making any purchases for an esxi server. Id link but im posting from a phone and it's nothing a quick Google wont find

 

Esxi does have a free version which can do a lot

 

Dammit Janet I'm too broke. I'd buy two at that price...

 

Yes. What I meant was hardware purchases. Not an esx server license. Esxi is the free version. Anyway it can be picky about hardware so its best to check that its compatible.

 

slight upgrade on the hardware front - saw a deal that was too good to turn down. Will now be running this on:
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
Gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5

the additional 2 cores and additional RAM slots on the motherboard should be useful.
This CPU has AMD Virtualization (AMD-V), what difference will that make and is this something that has to be setup or just enabled in the BIOS?

 

Not sure.... AMD are less stingy with the feature sets. You may be able to do some of the direct IO stuff, like passthrough. You can tell on the summary page when you have installed it.

See here:



Hard to tell though... as it is the 890 chipset and onwards that has hardware support for it supposedly.

Edit: I think you do need motherboard support... so someone else would have to tell you the benefits.

 

ok thanks.

A few questions about power:
ESXi doesn't support sleep states and I'd like automatic scheduled sleep and wake so that the server isn't running when I don't need it to. I know it's possible to do this with a script and cron job on linux, although I'm not sure what effect this will have on the vms, the clocks may have to be reset when it resumes. Is CentOS or similar my best bet for this?
I'm estimating my server will pull ~100W at idle, can ESXi or anything else significantly reduce this during long idle periods without sleeping?

 

Does it need all that power, I run a couple of VMs on a HP Microserver which has an embarrassing lack of power but fine for home use. Perhaps you can switch the CPU out for something less demanding like one of the AM3 45w chips.

 

Probably not and I could get one of those which would use ~50W less at idle making a saving of 25% so that might be the way to go, however I still only need the server on for about 12 hours a day, I could cut enegery use by almost an additional 50% by sleeping on a schedule if that's viable.

 

To be honest they can be quite power efficient platforms on idle, i wouldn't change much until you know what it uses when idling and in load, once up and running you can look at load plots etc and use a power meter to see what it uses and estimate better the cost and whether dropping CPU is worth it.

 

I'd look through this: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere5.1.pdf

There are advised bios settings (p15). I'm personally not concerned with the power draw so haven't looked into it.

Also, by default you'll find virtualisation features turned off in the bios... so worth making sure they are on.