{"id":1571,"date":"2011-07-30T11:03:03","date_gmt":"2011-07-30T16:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/?p=1571"},"modified":"2012-08-20T07:38:28","modified_gmt":"2012-08-20T13:38:28","slug":"home-lab-hosts-could-it-have-been-leaner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/home-lab-hosts-could-it-have-been-leaner\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Lab Hosts – Could it have been leaner? ($$$)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve had the lab running for a couple of weeks and I have made a few observations in relation to the configuration of each host.<\/p>\n

As mentioned in my previous post Home Lab Hosts – Just in time for vSphere 5<\/a><\/strong>, I used server class motherboards, requiring ECC RAM, with iKVM, etc. Here are a couple things I noticed that stood out:<\/p>\n

The CPUs<\/strong>
\nI chose the Intel Xeon E3-1230 processors because I wanted to be able to have quad cores with Hyperthreading, as well as support for VMDirectPath. In running 20 or so VMs my CPU utilization has been less than high. I haven’t had the opportunity to leverage VMDirectPath as of yet, but I am still happy I have the ability to.<\/p>\n

If VMDirectPath support isn’t a big deal for you, an Intel i3-2100T<\/a><\/strong> (i3-2100 isn’t on the board HCL) should suffice to run most workloads. The i3-2100 series processors have dual cores and Hyperthreading. These processors retailed about $100 less each on NewEgg than the E3-1230 processors did. Alternatively if you aren’t nesting as many ESXi hosts (I have 8 right now), you could also look at the Intel Pentium G620<\/a><\/strong> which is similar to the i3-2100 series, but without Hyperthreading. Those retail for about $77 each.<\/p>\n

Choosing the i3-2100T would drop the total cost by $200<\/strong>, while choosing the Pentium 620 would drop the cost by around $315<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Keep in mind that the G620 isn’t the only lower cost CPU compatible. The G840 and G850 are similar, and provide a higher clock speed. To be 100% sure the processor chosen is compatible, always check the motherboard manufacturer’s support site for compatibility.\u00a0 (Tyan in this case<\/a><\/strong>)<\/p>\n

The SSDs<\/strong>
\nI had heard rumors about the new ESXi 5 host cache feature, and that it required SSD drives to leverage it, but is it really necessary in a lab? I haven’t really stress tested the builds yet, so I’m not sure of the benefit as of yet.<\/p>\n

Many people run their labs off of USB sticks with much success. Had I dropped the SSDs from the build, that would drop the price by another $200<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Motherboard<\/strong>
\nI really like the board I chose. Even though it isn’t on the VMware HCL, it has been a very solid board thus far. I absolutely love the iKVM, and can’t imagine having 2 “headless” systems without having a remote console (iLO, DRAC, ASMA, etc).<\/p>\n

The only ding, is the EPS12V power requirement, which I had a workaround for.<\/p>\n

$0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Add-in NICs<\/strong>
\nI knew that the board had support for 3 NICs, but didn’t realize that the 3rd would work as a NIC for ESXi and<\/em> work for the iKVM simultaneously. Big win there. I bought 2 additional NICs to ensure I had at least 4 network connections, provided I went with multiple switches for frontend and backend networks. To be honest, I only have 2 NICs (of 5) online right now.<\/p>\n

Did I need the additional NICs? Today no, tomorrow likely. Had I scaled back to 1 additional NIC for each board, then that would have dropped $50 from the cost. Had I only went with the onboard NICs, that would have dropped the price by $100<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The bottom line<\/strong>
\nI’m pretty happy with the rigs as they are now, but I could have scaled them back and have been fine for a little while.<\/p>\n

If I had gone with the i3-2100T\/no SSD\/no additional NICs config, I would have saved about $500<\/strong>, bringing the cost around $1,150<\/strong>, or $575 each.<\/strong>
\nGoing with the Pentium G620\/no SSD\/no additional NICs config, I would have saved about $615<\/strong>, bringing the cost around $1,035<\/strong>, or $517.50 each<\/strong><\/p>\n

Keep in mind that both of those configs will run ESXi, and have 16GB, with iKVM. Still a win in my book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve had the lab running for a couple of weeks and I have made a few observations in relation to the configuration of each host. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[53,129,105,112],"class_list":["post-1571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-virtualization","tag-lab","tag-s5510","tag-vmware","tag-vsphere5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2322,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions\/2322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}