Budget 0-20k Found perfect components for my NAS/AlwaysOn ESXi Box - comments?

rock_ya_baby

~~~=o=~~~
Adept
Fellas
Wont to fair to fill the template for this...

Need a second headless rig to run my Cisco stuff and act as a low activity NAS.


NAS BUILD:

Purpose: to run 24x7, serve as vNAS to store family media and backups, NFS/Samba, VM Datastore and to host a few low cpu/high ram VMs.

VMs: NAS OS, WIN 2012, Ubuntu LTS, pfSense/SophosUTM and Cisco vWLC

Intel G3240 Pentium Dual Core LGA1150 4th Generation Processor -3.8K

Gigabyte B85M-D3H mobo, has 4 sata3, 2 sata2, 32gb ddr3 ram support -6K'ish

Western Digital Red WD10EFRX 1TB Internal Hard Drive - 5K

Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini-ITX Computer Case -4.5K

Decent 350W power supply -3K

16GB USB pendrive for ESXi boot -300rs

Already have about 16gb ram sticks spare that can be used.

On day 1, the system will run out of a shoe box. Following items to be purchased in future:

2x4TB WED Red HDDs (honestly 2TB is enough for media storage for me. I still file pix and vids on DVD)

1xCase
1x120GB SSD
1xDual gig Intel LAN card for etherchannel
1xFront mounted 16x4 LCD for sysinfo

Is there some way I can add an IPMI on the cheap? (Guess not)

Any comments? It's a budget machine build to support my main desktop as a 24x7 available no-messing-once-live box.
 
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1) Why would you use a processor that idles at ~50W for an always on- low cpu requirement machine
2) Why would you use a SSD for a system that isn't going to benefit from faster bootups and/or snappier application loading time (unless your VMs have that as a use case)
 
For IPMI, you will need Supermicro boards which do this or Intel vPRO motherboards. There was an ASRock Q77 board having vPro, but you would need a vPro supported CPU as well - i5/i7/Xeon at the minimum.

Rather than the dual gig, go for quad gig, since you will need 1 WAN, 1 LAN port at a minimum, and the onboard - which is usually a Realtek eth, will not be supported by ESXi. The cost of the card is 7K from ebay. Plus, you may want to keep the cisco VMs on their own subnet for testing.

The SSD for booting VMs is a very good thing, as I can reboot my VMs within 30 seconds, while on HDDs they boot in excess of 4 minutes.

Ensure you are not hamstrung for both CPU grunt and memory, both of which will handicap all VMs.[DOUBLEPOST=1471007712][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh, and Intel RAID is not supported by ESXi, so you will need a RAID controller card or take the Hyper-V route I took.

Tagging @cyberwarfare for his knowledge on motherboards as well.
 
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+1 on changing the CPU to a Quad Core instead of the Dual Core if you want to run multiple VMs at once. if you are going to be using GNS3 for Cisco stimulation its fine but running all of them at the same time will not be good in the long run.

at best your cpu can take 2 VMs excluding GNS3 (unless you are doing heavy simulations here then it might not even take 2 VMs to bottleneck your cpu)

For OS yeah ESXi might will work with BIOS *software* RAID plus network card will also be a hurdle you'll have to manage so i'll suggest unRAID its paid but only $50 i think, else Hyper-V is your best option.

Bottom line: config is good enough, the 120gb ssd's are excellent choice they are dirt cheap these days and are good for VM's (I myself have 3 x 120gb ssd's running 6 vms) and the only bottle neck i see is the CPU + as @superczar said its power hungry. So i will suggest a better cpu if you can find that idles at lower wattage for pocket friendliness.

IPMI i believe you will have to look for PCI cards there are plenty of models available e.g. ATEN IP8000 etc. so maybe look into these.

P.s. There is a custom VMware ISO you can make to force Realtek Ethernet drivers into the Setup and get the network recognized. I've done this a few times not that difficult.
Link
 
I am not worried about the incompatibilities, have hacked my way around those with ESXi in the past.

No need for RAID at this stage. But i am worried about TDP of this proccy, next better alternative is i3-6100T (?) 35TDP IIRC. That's too expensive compared to my current choice :(

I cant find anyother quad core low TDP LGA1150 cpu for <8K INR... Unless someone here can suggest?
 
Most of my heavy VMs and Cisco stuff (GNS3/ISE/Prime + 5 VMs run off the main desktop in VMware WS 12, AMD 8 core, 32G RAM). This machine just needs to run Cisco virtual wireless controller, a NFS NAS for VMs and an AD/CA/NTP inside a Win2012 VM; the cpu+mobo I mentioned, I think it should easily handle all that in this cpu + 16GB RAM.

Some extra info and background - I'm implementing 802.1x over the network and also a guest wifi (Cisco NAC/ISE implementation). Already have Cisco 2*3750G switches, 2*Juniper SSG5s, 3*Cisco 3520i APs. The whole house is wired with Cat6. For no reason everything runs OSPF. For all practical purposes, the home network mimics a HA Enterprise network setup. Family's internet access is considered 'business critical', no tinkering should affect that.

RAID is not something I'm thinking of right now, over the years I've started caring less and less about data backups, memories/pictures etc :p Would love to tinker with it for sure when I have excess disposable income.
 
Maybe you are doing something wrong... Ive done that exact same steps for 3 dell optiplex which i wanted esxi on, find out what model of realtec nic is on the chipset. Then you'll have to find out if the vib file has that version

Dont want to go OT, but none of the VIBs had that specific HWID. Later, I just ditched it and went with HyperV, which is great if you are mainly running MS Software. Plus, you get the premium VMWare features for free. Coming to the loss, I have over provisioned my HyperV host for this, with an abundance of RAM and CPU resources.
 
Most of my heavy VMs and Cisco stuff (GNS3/ISE/Prime + 5 VMs run off the main desktop in VMware WS 12, AMD 8 core, 32G RAM). This machine just needs to run Cisco virtual wireless controller, a NFS NAS for VMs and an AD/CA/NTP inside a Win2012 VM; the cpu+mobo I mentioned, I think it should easily handle all that in this cpu + 16GB RAM.

Some extra info and background - I'm implementing 802.1x over the network and also a guest wifi (Cisco NAC/ISE implementation). Already have Cisco 2*3750G switches, 2*Juniper SSG5s, 3*Cisco 3520i APs. The whole house is wired with Cat6. For no reason everything runs OSPF. For all practical purposes, the home network mimics a HA Enterprise network setup. Family's internet access is considered 'business critical', no tinkering should affect that.

RAID is not something I'm thinking of right now, over the years I've started caring less and less about data backups, memories/pictures etc :p Would love to tinker with it for sure when I have excess disposable income.

Me too throwing everything into the Google Cloud & OneDrive.

OSPF :eek: Damn: Cant do that - Dont have the equipment. Well, I could.... :mind whirring into action:, types some keywords in a google search...
 
But i am worried about TDP of this proccy, next better alternative is i3-6100T (?) 35TDP IIRC. That's too expensive compared to my current choice :(
The TDP ratings especially for dual core chips are just a formality. I wouldn't be surprised if a regular Pentium matched the i3 'T' variants considering their lower clocks. We had some discussion on actual TDP figures for Sandy Bridge Pentiums a long time back (TLDR they were much lower) : https://www.techenclave.com/community/threads/haswell-pentium-i3-availability.153231/page-2
You could get an AMD AM1 proc if you want to limit TDPs on the cheap - though performance will correspondingly be much lower.

Also there will still be plenty of power overheads from your PSU, motherboard, disks, etc.
 
Oh, and AFAIK, those with higher TDPs just went to full TDP for the time the workload was high and then came back down. The argument was whether a Pentium/i3 T variant was better than a normal variant. The margin was minute. The Pentium would stay at full TDP for the entire time. The i3 T varian did about 60-70% pf the time. The normal i3 did for less than 40% and came down back. Or something to that effect.
 
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