VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘white box’

One of the most popular topics of discussion in the virtualization community has always been about installing ESX on a whitebox server. Two of the most popular posts on VM /ETC have been ESX home lab hardware shopping list and Cheap ESX solutions for testing which are both about finding and using hardware not on the VMware HCL that can run ESX. Now, with VMware announcing new relationships with ASUS, Gigabyte, Tyan, Inventec, and Supermicro, ESX 3.5 and ESXi will be certified, supported, and even ship embedded on more server platforms than ever before.

VMware provides a timeframe of availability in the official announcement linked above:
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I previously posted an email I received that provided a hardware shopping list for building cheap AMD or Intel ESX servers for home testing. There is also a few good recent discussions in the VMware Community Forums that provide more suggestions for compatible ESX hardware.

Cheap ESX Solution (Tests) discussion contains a table of motherboards and officially unsupported but working servers provided by Dave Mishchenko. Read the post for even more systems and parts to build working ESX servers.

ESX 3.5 test lab lists several desktop systems on which forum users have been successful in installing ESX.

Cheap ESX server, onboard SATA – Working !! starts off providing a parts list of a working ESX system, and then continues with tips and tricks to get ESX working.

Of course, all of the discussions as well as my previous post do not cover the cost of anything except the hardware for ESX. You also need to consider how you will build the complete VI3 environment. For example, you can run VC as a VM, and use Openfiler for your shared storage

I’m not sure where this originated, but I got this email today from a coworker. It’s a shopping list to build an ESX home lab with compatible hardware for as cheap as possible. There are 2 host designs.

1. a dual core AMD host for $337
2. a quad core Intel host for $695.

The coolest part about this email is it gives you not only the parts but also the links on sites like newegg.com and allstarshop.com. I haven’t verified all the links nor built either of the systems. The few links I checked have been good, but the price has fluctuated slightly – which is expected.

Here’s the email in it’s entirety as I received it. Let me know if anyone knows who created it. Read the rest of this entry »