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ESXi & PowerEdge 2600: any limitations?
Am looking to use a Dell PowerEdge 2600 server w/ 4GB memory, five 36GB SCSI drives, and two 2.4GHz Xeon processors as proof-of-concept box for use with VMWare's free ESX3i product.
The VMWare ESX Compatibility Guide does not give its blessing to this hardware; however, I purchased the server based on the experience of others that have successfully deployed this configuration.
Does anyone have any experience with ESXi and a PowerEdge 2600 server? Are there any limitations to be aware of?
The VMWare ESX Compatibility Guide does not give its blessing to this hardware; however, I purchased the server based on the experience of others that have successfully deployed this configuration.
Does anyone have any experience with ESXi and a PowerEdge 2600 server? Are there any limitations to be aware of?
Last Comment
Irwin W.
Unfortunately the VMWare hardware compatability list is there for good reason. If you have purchased the hardware already and have also purchased a support contract from VMWare for your ESXi software, you may have difficulty getting support for your Virtualized environment from VMWare.
BTW, how many guests and What OSes are you planning on running? Even in a RAID 5 configuration, you may get only 120GB of usable space. Also 4GB or RAM, again, depending on the OS, is not a lot of RAM...
ASKER
Thanks for the feedback.
I realized that I may have an issue with obtaining support because of the absence of the hardware on the HCL. This box is going to be used as a platform for a generic proof of concept. It will never be placed into a production environment.
Will probably run two Windows Server-based guests. Maybe three. RAM can be upgraded if necessary. The storage limitation is interesting. I will have to wait and see.
Would ESXi handle an external USB hard disk drive for additional storage or backup?
Regards.
I realized that I may have an issue with obtaining support because of the absence of the hardware on the HCL. This box is going to be used as a platform for a generic proof of concept. It will never be placed into a production environment.
Will probably run two Windows Server-based guests. Maybe three. RAM can be upgraded if necessary. The storage limitation is interesting. I will have to wait and see.
Would ESXi handle an external USB hard disk drive for additional storage or backup?
Regards.
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VMWare does not support USB as it is a Linux type OS that VMWare built. You could setup NAS, SAN, iSCSI or NFS storage for additional space if necessary.
ASKER
Well... I obtained my PowerEdge 2600. I installed ESX v3.5 server. Everything seems to work pretty well... except when I install VMKernel to access NFS shares on a Windows box (using WSU). The server hangs. The only other issue - installing Dell OpenManage agents doesn't appear to monitor the PERC 4/di controller. Any help would be appreciated.
Otherwise... A guy at Dell told me that the 2600 isn't on the HCL because it had been discontinued prior to the implementation of the hardware certification process. Works for me... so far so good with the 2600.
Otherwise... A guy at Dell told me that the 2600 isn't on the HCL because it had been discontinued prior to the implementation of the hardware certification process. Works for me... so far so good with the 2600.
Make sure you upgrade the BIOS. You probabaly will not be able to monitor the PERC controller through ESX unless it has agents specifically for ESX
VMware
VMware, a software company founded in 1998, was one of the first commercially successful companies to offer x86 virtualization. The storage company EMC purchased VMware in 1994. Dell Technologies acquired EMC in 2016. VMware’s parent company is now Dell Technologies. VMware has many software products that run on desktops, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS, which allows the virtualizing of the x86 architecture. Its enterprise software hypervisor for servers, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is a bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the server hardware and does not require an additional underlying operating system.
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