In episode 519 Building the Ultimate White Box for under $2000 from Hak5, they covered building an ESXi Server for under $2000.
Here are the parts they used:
Motherboard.....Asus P6T Deluxe V2
CPU.....Intel Core i7 920
Memory.....Corsair XMS3 240pin DDR3 1333 PC3 12GB
Case.....Rosewill RSV-Z4000
Power Supply.....Corsair CMPSU - 650TX
4 Drive Trayless Hot Swap SATA Backplane....StarTech HSB4300SATBK
Hard Drive.....Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB x 4
Video Card.....MSI GeForce 8400GS
Raid Controller.....3ware 9650SE-4ML
Network Adapter.....Intel Pro 1000 GT
USB Stick....Patriot Xporter XT 4GB
As I did not want to spend $2000, I decided to put together a scaled down version based on their configuration leveraging as much parts I have around. I A few months have gone by and I still do not feel like giving up this desktop. While catching up on an old episode of Hak5, I decided put together a scaled-down version of what they were using. The first thing I decided was not to use RAID. Next I needed to figure out what I could savage.
After checking around, I was able to dig up:
1) case but the power supply needed to be upgraded
2) internal dvd drive
3) Intel Pro 1000 GT network card that I bought months ago on my previous ESX build
4) 8 GB USB Stick
After searching around for the best prices and possible configurations, I ended with the same core parts used by Hak5. The only item I was not able to get on sale or get a rebate on was the memory.
Here are the parts I ended up with:
Motherboard.....Asus P6T Deluxe V2
CPU.....Intel Core i7 920
Memory.....Corsair XMS3 240pin DDR3 1333 PC3 12GB
Power Supply.....Corsair CMPSU - 750TX
Hard Drive.....Western Digital Caviar Black 1.5TB
Video Card.....Asus EN8400GS
Building the system was a lot of fun! I was even able to run the old motherboard outside of the case.
Related Posts:
Part 1 The Time Has Come
Part 2 Running ESXi on VMware Fusion
Part 3 Building My ESXi Server
Part 4 Installing ESXi 4 on a USB Stick
Part 5 Installing vSphere Client on Windows
Part 6 Updating ESXi using vSphere Host Update Utility
Part 7 Browsing the VMware ESXi Datastore
Part 8 WinSCP to the Rescue
Part 9 Creating a VM
Part 10 Downloading a Virtual Machine
***Updated March 26th 2010
I have decided to continue the series with at least the following:
Part 11 Running vSphere Client from Ubuntu
Part 12 Running vSphere Client from Mac OS
Part 13 Adding/Removing a VM to ESXi
Part 14 Export in ESXi
Part 15 Deploying OVF Templates
Part 16 Adding a License Key
Posts
Keith,
ReplyDeleteI was wondering if you could give me a hand with my ESXi4 install on the Asus P6T V2. As you know, it's not supported by the software and the install isn't exactly a walk in the park. I realize it doesn't support the network card by default and I got around this by making a custom oem.tgz with those network drivers. Unfortunately after selecting the hard drive (caviar black as well), I get the infamous cannot find system or image error. Do you have any tips?
Thanks!
Hi, I pretty much did the same as you. same board running esxi but then decided that I would have more "fun" running esxi under WS 7.0 and using an opensource NAS like openfiler so that is where I am today. However, I dual boot into OSX SL on the Asus system and am in the process of trying to install ESXi 4.1 in fusion. Then off to convert my virtual ESXi world to WS 8.0 and move up to ESXi 5.0 with the new VCenter. Cheers
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