Tuesday, 25 March 2008

The ultimate ESX 3.5 white box

Since running ESX 3.5 on Workstation 6 seems to be impossible, I had to find another way to explore the new features of ESX 3.5. Searching for a cheap supported configuration isn’t an easy job. You have to find a supported motherboard, network card and SATA controller. I have found a desktop with all these items combined. You can use The HP Compaq d530 - Small form factor (SFF) DG755A desktop. My model has a CPU from Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.8 GHz, a NIC from Broadcom Corporatoin NetXtreme BCM5782 Gigabit Ethernet and a SATA 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller. I added a 512 Mb memory bank so I have 1 Gigabyte in total. Enough to host a few virtual machines .

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Eric Sloof

in WhiteBox at 09:23 | 17 Comments | 2 Trackbacks

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The complete white box list
Two weeks ago I published an article about the ultimate white box, well I wasn’t the only one searching for some cheap hardware to host ESX 3.5. Dave Mishchenko, a VMware community champion from Vancouver, discovered a way to extract a list of supported

Weblog: NTPRO.NL
Tracked: Jan 14, 21:28

Dave Mishchenko’s Whitebox list
Yesterday Dave over at vm-help.com posted a comment on the ultimate white box article with an URL. I tough let’s give it a try and visited his website. What I saw there is incredible a complete list with Motherboards and unsupported servers that work with

Weblog: NTPRO.NL
Tracked: Mar 26, 21:22

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And cheap it is, prices on the market range from 140 to 175 EURO's, just add to that the price for the extra memory (512) and you can have a suitable test/trial system for less than 200 EURO's!!

#1 Gerben Kloosterman (Homepage) on 2008-01-03 13:56 (Reply)

I bought myself a 500 Gig Samsung Sata disk and placed my VMFS partition on it. Actually I made five partitions so I can try out Storage VMotion.

#2 Eric Sloof (Homepage) on 2008-01-03 20:55 (Reply)

I had one of these laying around, and set it up.

Even though I added a supported nic, the onboard nic was recognized by ESX, so I didn't need the additional nic.

I didn't have any SATA drives or a SATA RAID controller, so I used the instructions found here: http://www.vmug.nl/downloads/VMWare_NFS_en_iSCSI.pdf.

It isn't the fastest box, but it works.

Thanks,
Jase

#3 Jase McCarty (Homepage) on 2008-01-04 02:37 (Reply)

Forgot to add the URL:
http://www.jasemccarty.com/blog/2008/01/esx-35-on-hp-d530.html

#3.1 Jase McCarty (Homepage) on 2008-01-04 02:39 (Reply)

Do you have interest or plan to install ESX Server 3i on HP Compaq d530? Thanks!

#4 Jon on 2008-01-06 13:49 (Reply)

Not in production. Only in test...

#4.1 Jase McCarty (Homepage) on 2008-01-09 20:50 (Reply)

Why not in production ? When I create a HA/DRS cluster with 4 of those machines I think the VM uptime is greater than one large server.

#4.1.1 Eric Sloof (Homepage) on 2008-01-09 21:11 (Reply)

I wouldn't have a problem putting it production for a small implementation.

#4.1.1.1 Jase McCarty (Homepage) on 2008-01-11 17:07 (Reply)

Hi,

Just recently bought myself a D530 (2.66 Ghz with 1.5 Gb mem) but I have a weird problem with 3i. I was able to set it up with a problem and could format the SATA disk with VMFS. I was also able to convert an existing VM from vmware server to this box, runs fine. However, when I create a new vm with XP, the XP setup will not recognize the disk. Any ideas? I tried both LSI and Buslogic.

Thanks,
GJ.

P.s. anyone who got Hyperthreading enabled with the D530?

#4.1.1.1.1 GJ on 2008-01-13 22:32 (Reply)

I have the 2.8Ghz version and hyperthreading is enabled ok - are you sure that CPU supports HT - I thought it was only the faster ones, do you see the option in the BIOS?

#4.1.1.1.1.1 Vinf (Homepage) on 2008-01-18 17:30 (Reply)

I will say, I didn't install 3i on my D530, but rather 3.5 (build 64607).

#4.1.1.1.1.2 Jase McCarty (Homepage) on 2008-01-18 17:50 (Reply)

I think the problem is XP itself. It's possible it doesn't support scsi-disk and you need to provide drivers for this.

#4.1.1.1.1.3 Patric on 2008-03-25 12:32 (Reply)

Use these drivers:

http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/drivers_tools.html

// Joel

#4.1.1.1.1.3.1 Joel (Homepage) on 2008-03-25 15:18 (Reply)

Processor 2.66 in d530 not supporting HT, but 2.8 yes.
I checked boot systems a finaly I decided for 2.66 version because of power consumption.
In idle has my "server" 45W and fully loaded 90W.
2.8 version has 70-80W in idle mode and 130W fully loaded. Big sacrifice for a little bit better performance, I guess....

#4.1.1.1.1.4 Anonymous on 2009-01-05 11:39 (Reply)

A overview of workstations working with VMware:
http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3.5/Whiteboxes_SATA_Controllers_for_ESX_3.5_3i.htm

I use a HP dc7600. Version 3.5 was working, 3.0 not. It has 1 Gb of memory and is not really fast. I will try to install more memory.

Fred

#5 Fred on 2008-03-26 08:36 (Reply)

Well after i did the training i needed a pc also
After searching i found a HP DC7100 tower P4 HT 3Ghz
Putted 2GB memory in it for now (rather 4GB)
A changed the harddrive by a cheap 360GB disk
This is also a cheap machine to buy.
Installation went fine. And had the same problem installing XP.

Good solution to try it at home

#6 Ike Bierhuizen (Homepage) on 2008-04-04 22:09 (Reply)

2 D530s, a Virtual VirtualCenter and a Virtual Lefthand SAN. I'm happy!

http://www.ipmer.com/2008/04/esx-home-lab-on-cheap.html

CARLO.

#7 Carlo Costanzo (Homepage) on 2008-05-02 07:29 (Reply)

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The ultimate ESX 3.5 white box

NTPRO.NL - Eric Sloof

Tuesday, 25 March 2008

The ultimate ESX 3.5 white box

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