Jase's Place: ESX 3.5 on a HP D530

ESX 3.5 on a HP D530

Well I was looking at this blog post:
http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/325-The-ultimate-ESX-3.5-white-box.html

And I thought... We've got one of those lying around.

So I figured I'd give it a try.

I added a supported nic, and was on my way. Then I realized that my D530 only had an IDE drive in it.

I installed ESX 3.5, and sure enough it griped because it didn't have any storage. On a positive note, the onboard nic was recognized by ESX. So I didn't even need to add a "supported" nic.

Well I didn't have any SATA drives or non-supported SATA RAID controllers.

So I looked at this VMTN forum post:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/47225

To address some storage, without wanting to setup another box on the network, I followed the instructions from the PDF located in the thread: http://www.vmug.nl/downloads/VMWare_NFS_en_iSCSI.pdf

Thanks to Reinout Wijnveen for the instructions.

Despite the fact that I don't know Dutch, I was able to mull my way through the document. Sure enough, success!

Now I've got a "free" ESX test box. Keep in mind it isn't the fastest (with a 3.0 GHz P4, and 1GB of RAM), but I can "play" without having to touch our test or production environments.

This entry was posted on 03 January 2008 at 7:16 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.

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6 Comments:

At 10:14 PM, Anonymous said...: Jase, we must get you an ebay account, a 42u rack, and some inspiration to buy rack mount server hardware for your ESX playground :)

Jason Boche
At 10:24 PM, Jase McCarty said...: Hey Jason,

Actually, I like to keep this stuff out of the house.

I do have a buddy that has a 42" rack in his living room...

That's a little much for me.

I'm on eBay... But you need money for that... Lol!
At 4:39 AM, Anonymous said...: I have a Dell Optiplex 745 SF, I wil use this computer for VMware ESX 3.5, now, I can't find a supported low profile PCI or PCI x16 network adapter for this small form factor PC. Can you help me? I wil not buy a very expensive network adapter...
At 6:27 PM, Jase McCarty said...: You might want to look at an Intel Pro/1000 low profile server adapter.

Here's a Google shopping search link for one:
http://www.google.com/products?num=50&hl=en&q=intel+pro/1000+low+profile+server+adapter&scoring=p
At 9:09 AM, TechHead said...: Hi Jase,

vinf.net has also had good success with running ESX v3.5 on the D530. he has got a blog entry on the performance he has been getting from it so far (see: http://vinf.net/2008/02/01/performance-on-a-cheap-esx-pc/)

I have been looking for a good low cost ESX test server solution and ended up buying an HP ML110 server for about £149 (UK) that runs ESX v3.5 just fine also. I have blogged about it here http://www.techhead.co.uk/building-a-low-cost-cheap-vmware-esx-test-server

Let us know how you get on using the D530.

Simon
At 12:24 AM, Carlo Costanzo said...: Jase,

Thanks for the post on the d530s! It inspired me to set up my own lab and finally retire my Power consuming PowerEdge servers. My Electric bill thanks you. I have also installed the LeftHand VSA on the boxes so now have a fully functional HA, DRS environment. I posted a little about it on http://www.ipmer.com/2008/04/esx-home-lab-on-cheap.html

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

Carlo Costanzo