Mobo for VMWare box

[tribunal88]

I've been building computers for gaming for over a decade now, but I'm into new territory here and trying to keep this on a budget so I'm reaching out to the forum. I'll need to give a little background so bear with me. What I want to do is put a box together and then use VMware to slice it into 4 smaller boxes running CentOS on all 4. I'll be using VMware ESX so I can run it directly on the hardware without a host OS. Now, I'm an Oracle DBA and I'm getting into Oracle's Application Server for the first time so I need to set up a test box, but at the same time my home server box is getting a little long in the tooth so I figured I'd kill 2 birds with one stone and do both things at the same time.

For anyone who has Oracle experience (everyone else can skip this part), what I plan on doing with the virtual boxes is to use 2 as a 2-node RAC/ASM database cluster and then build out the App Server onto the other 2 boxes using one as the infrastructure layer and the other as mid-tier. The mid-tier will also function as the all-purpose-grunt gateway/DHCP/webhosting/etc box.

I've been working with our sr. sysadmin on getting VMware to simulate the environments, and even cumulatively, there's not going to be a lot of processing. I should be able to get away with a quad-core Intel Q8200 w/ 4MB of RAM, with intention of giving each box 1 core and 1G (I might adjust that as time goes on). I also think I can get away with a single SATA HDD, again because IO should be a minimum, and I *should* be able to bridge all the virtual network cards to a single device (I haven't looked into how this will effect DHCP, so that duty might get moved back to the router for our house computers, giving the bridged cards static-IPs).

So what I need is a good, stable motherboard that's compatible with VMware and doesn't mind being on 24x7x365. I don't mind paying for quality but at the same time I'm helping my future wife's parents pay for our wedding and then there's furniture, honeymoon, rent ... you get the idea. Budget is the order of the day, but as I said, I'll always pony up the cash for quality so I get what I'm looking for.

If anyone has any recommendations or has used products in similar ways, I'd be grateful for the input.

Thanks!

 

[classy]

To run VMWare ESX I wouldn't build a box. You would be better off just buying a server. I would look at like a Dell. Thats what we use at work. It will also probably be cheaper. You didn't mention disk space. ESXi and ESX Infrastrucuture both are finnicky with hardware. I wouldn't try to build a box using parts. Use HCL to find out what systems will fit your needs.

 

[tribunal88]

Yeah I thought about going down the server road, but I need to stay around $500-$600. The servers I specced out with similar hardware on Dell were going to run me ~$800 and that's more than I'm willing to spend on this project, not with the other expenses I'm looking at this year.

 

[classy]

Here is a white box list for hardware.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Sounds like an interesting project. Good luck. I'd just buy a lower-cost Dell or Supermicro.

 

[Ratman6161]

One important thing you should know is that your idea of running on a "single SATA" drive is just not going to work. From the VMWare support site: "VMFS is not supported on IDE or SATA. An ESX Server host must have SCSI storage, NAS, or a SAN on which to store virtual machines." So while you can install ESX Server itself on a SATA drive, you cannot create a VMFS partition so you will have nowhere to run any virtual machines.

Another thing to note is that while VWware calls itself a "bare metal hypervisor" you need to take that with a grain of salt. What it really is is a customized version of Red Hat Linux. I don't remember exactly where as its been a few months since I last did an ESX install, but you actually do see a Red Hat logo during the installation process and anyone who has ever installed Red Hat or Fedora will recognize things like the disk partitioning GUI almost immediately. So to me, ESX server really does have a "host OS" and its Linux. This host OS does use some memory. Right now I'm looking at a system with a total of 32 GB with ESX server using about 1.25 GB of that. So its usage is not huge, but there is some and if you only have 4GB to start with its noticeable.

You say ESX server but is that what you really mean and if so do you really want that? ESX server is the flagship product that you pay for. For your usage, it probably has absolutely no benefit over the free ESXi. But even with ESXi the SAS/SCSI/SAN or NAS limitation is there. From a couple of different comments, you seem to imply that this will be a home server? If it is, or even if its at work if its a low end non-production setup, consider VMware server. This product is free though it does require you to have either a Windows or Linux host OS installed first - but it will run quite nicely on converted desktop hardware including regular old desktop disk drives.

 

[tribunal88]

Thanks. I didn't realize that about the SATA drives. If I still use one of the virtualized servers as my gateway under GSX, that's not going to effect my network traffic more than ESX would it? I suppose I could use the host OS as the gateway and virtualize the other 3 boxes off of it.

Also, as far as work/home, one of the boxes will supplant the home server, but the reason to build-out is to test design and implementation of new tech for work.

 

[Ratman6161]

Originally posted by: tribunal88
Thanks. I didn't realize that about the SATA drives. If I still use one of the virtualized servers as my gateway under GSX, that's not going to effect my network traffic more than ESX would it? I suppose I could use the host OS as the gateway and virtualize the other 3 boxes off of it.

Also, as far as work/home, one of the boxes will supplant the home server, but the reason to build-out is to test design and implementation of new tech for work.

When using ESX Server, the host ESX Server uses at least one IP address for itself. Each virtual machine also uses at least one IP address. The virtual machines are using virtual NIC's but are seen on your network as separate machines (i.e. as far as the rest of your network goes there is no difference between a virtual machine and a hardware machine). So to run 4 virtual machines will require 5 addresses

Using VMWare server (GSX doesn't exist any more) you can set the virtual NIC's for the VM's to NAT. Setting it up that way the host machine acts as the DHCP server and gateway for the VM's. If you have it running on a Windows host, in the list of services you will see two new services: VMware DHCP Service and VMware NAT service. So you don't have to configure a VM to do this.

I would strongly recommend just downloading VMWare server and doing some experimenting. Its free so there is nothing to lose.

 

[tomt4535]

ESXi is free too and works really well for what you are trying to do. See the whitebox HCL above for a good source of compatible hardware. The VMware HCL's are also a good choice as well.

 

[tribunal88]

Originally posted by: tomt4535
ESXi is free too and works really well for what you are trying to do. See the whitebox HCL above for a good source of compatible hardware. The VMware HCL's are also a good choice as well.

It sounds like from previous posts however that ESX/i won't work with my single SATA HDD idea.

UPDATE: Looks like there's a way to get it to work, I just need to alter the ISO and dd file with an updated oem.tgz compliments of communities.vmware.com

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Hope I'm not stepping on anyone toes but:

you could also try Microsoft Hyper-V which has a much bigger HCL.
I have a p5Q Deluxe + Areca 1210 running ~4 vms -- runs great!

 

[Hardlin]

I'm running ESXi on a Dell Precision 390 with a single 1TB SATA drive. I haven't experienced any issues at this time.