Hi Guys, I am looking for some advice on getting my home lab updated. I need to start playing with Sharepoint and see how well it intergrates into the Outlook client and OWA client. We are looking at document management systems. I was thinking that an install of SBS 2012 should work best. However because of the way our VM infrastructure is configured I cant install it there and dont have anywhere to setup a new VM lab for myself so I am going to have to do it at home! Currently I have the following hardware in my home lab: Dell Power Edge SC440 Core 2 Duo E4300 / E6300 (cant rememebr to be honest) 4GB ECC memory Dell Hardware RAID controller (i think its one of the perc i5's) with 2 x 250gb Additional Intel 1GB Lan card This was running ESXi5 fine for a little while with a couple of very small testing VM's. Will this hardware be suitable for running a virtualised instance of SBS 2012 and a client vm? Another question, I'm familiar with ESX, but was thinking of trying out the MS standalone free Hyper-V server they offer. Does anyone know of the difference in overhead at all? Regards, Nims
SBS2012 will probably moan, might not even install due to the RAM - in that it wants loads. SBS2011 (i havent done any work with 2012 yet) moans/doesnt install well with less than 12gb. EDIT: does sbs2012 exist?! I can't find anything on it.
Hyper-V requires you install Windows Server with Hyper-V enabled, and then run virtuals on top of it. ESX or ESXi run directly on the tin to virtualise within it. The upshot of Hyper-V is that the Hyper-V server itself could be used as your 'guest' os machine cutting down the resources needed, as it can connect to its own virtuals. The downshot of Hyper-V is that it uses more resources compared to ESXi by itself, and you're going to need two network cards for it whereas ESXi will be happy with one; Hyper-V requires one NIC for the 'management' networks and another NIC for the guests. As you're doing this in a home lab there's probably a way around that, but there you go.
Forgive me must be SBS 2011, our technet subscription is in the process of renewal so right now I can actually see what I would be downloading. The Hyper-V implementation I was looking at was from the following link This appears to be a stripped core server 2008 r2 with the Hyper V role enabled on install. I'm guessing that using a windows based host is regardless going to have a larger overhead then a linux based one. That and I am more familiar with vmware via my exposure at work. This has made me decide to go the ESXi route. Just done some more (basic) reading around SBS 2011, and minimum to install is going to be 8GB of RAM so Nimbu's gonna have to go spend some cash. Well I do have access to some HP rackmount machines but the racket they will make in the house wont go down to well... I can reuse the PCI-E raid controller and additional NIC from the Dell box. I have an i5-760 that would prob work well for the CPU, however my MB is a P55 itx, so needs discrete VGA adapter and leaves me no slots for NICs or RAID controller. Thanks for the help so far chaps. Nims
what ram do you need? I have 4gb (2x2gb) of FB ECC DDr2 just sat on a shelf at home, I *think* its hp branded, doesnt go in any of my current servers in my lab at home, or any sites, as mine all take ECC but not fully buffered, or they're DDR3. If that will suit your Dell at home let me know and it's yours for postage. If not, last time I checked for ECC DDr2 on the crucial site for my ml310 G4, i think it was about £40 for 4gb, so about £10 a gb. If you want when I get home i'll grab the actual details off the ram.
It is a common misconception that Hyper-V R2 needs either Full or Core 2008 R2 to be deployed, this is only correct if you required a clustered deployment of Hyper-V in an enterprise environment. As the OP as linked Hyper-V also comes in a standalone hypervisor flavour that work much in the same way as ESXi, although is still does use more hardware overhead, this is minimal. In direct relation to the original post, I would upgrade you memory, to atleast 8gb, as SP, and SQL will want want want, and this will give you a poor experience of how it integrates with other Microsoft suites, such as Exchange, Outlook and Lync. To give you an example my current SP 2010 test deployment consists of three servers, (App, Web and SQL) each are dual core, 8gb running on ESXi. Get memory up and keep your core count down and for an initial test you should be OK. Hope this helps Bennie
Thanks for the offer Margo, but I cant use the FB memory on this particular box that and it limited to a max of 1GB per slot, which is a damn shame as I have stacks of similar HP memory at home. Looks like I will have to start speccing a machine this weekend. Tbh its something i need to do for my own personal skills development.
