My new project...

[zebulebu]

After ***ing around getting ESX to work from within VMWare workstation as a VM (wicked cool, but frustrating and time-consuming) I have decided to spend the next four weeks' worth of geektime sat in my dungeon building an ESX 3.5 lab.

After reading a post on TechHead I just went and bought three ML115s and have availed myself of a couple of Catalyst 2950s and an 1800 series router I had knocking about which will form the basis of the lab.



After much arsing about with couriers (grrrrr) I went and picked the (ahem) 'servers' up from the depot myself this evening - and was shocked at just how dinky they are - no bigger than the average corporate desktop. I plan on putting ESX on two of them, and using the third as an iSCSI target - probably running OpenFiler, I haven't yet decided - with oodles of storage. I'm sticking an HP SATA RAID card in to handle this. Apparently the onboard SATA controller on these little suckers isn't supported out of the box and requires a script to be run to kick it into life, which will be my first hurdle to overcome. Also, I'm still waiting on delivery of eight Intel Gb NICs as the onboard NIC isn't supported by ESX - I'm starting to get itchey in anticipation!

My wife just took one look at it all this evening sat in the front room and sighed... What must it be like married to a hopeless case like me?

For those of you interested, I'll post updates as and when I get round to it!

[Theprof]

That does look like a fun project, but also quite complicated! I would definitely be interested in updates. It would be interesting to see how things turn out. Good luck Zeb!

[zebulebu]

Already a change in plans - and I'm not even a day into the project

I've bought two array controllers and am going to use them as VMFS datastores on the two ESX hosts, then use the third one for VirtualCenter rather than cannibalise an old box I had lying around.

I don't think nerds make good project planners!

[Sparky]

Sounds good mate, keep us updated

[NightWalker]

I like a good project, maybe I'm just a computer nerd...

[onoski]

Interesting project Zeb, keep us updated as am keen on virtualisation too I take it the couriers that were messing about were city links?

[zebulebu]

Originally Posted by onoski

Interesting project Zeb, keep us updated as am keen on virtualisation too I take it the couriers that were messing about were city links?

LOLOL - how did you guess? Still, not quite as bad as TNT - officially the ****tiest company in the UK. Most of their drivers have the IQ of a root vegetable and as for the staff who 'work' at their depots - I've met more intelligent pieces of furniture.

[Mr.Cheeks]

Zab - sounds good!
...waiting for your updates too, and try and keep it simple for us 1st/2nd liners!

[jiggy]

hi zeb, looks good mate...I too came across that post on tech head and was going to get myself some of those boxes but I managed to get esx working on my gaming pc so now I play "esx" instead of Call of Duty. I also have another server running win2003 with VMWare Server on it. I installed openfiler as a vm on this server (with the vmdk files actually being stored on my terastation nas box) and made it an iscsi target for my ESX box. Also used it to practice clustering for my mcse using the microsoft iscsi initiator.

Anyway theres heaps of fun you can have with these kind of setups...hope you enjoy it, Ill be looking for your updates :-)

Jiggy

[Luddym]

Now that's a nice little 'geeky' project.

I love virtualization, and ESX to play with is great. Keep us updated Zeb.

[onoski]

Originally Posted by zebulebu

LOLOL - how did you guess? Still, not quite as bad as TNT - officially the ****tiest company in the UK. Most of their drivers have the IQ of a root vegetable and as for the staff who 'work' at their depots - I've met more intelligent pieces of furniture.

That means there is hope and improvement chances for City Links then?

[Arroryn]

Zeb - sounds like a really interesting project, and I look forward to following it

Let me know what the ML115s are like. As far as 'servers' go they're grossly cheap, and I'd like a real person's opinion on them (as opposed to a saleperson) before I get one. Mind you, if you've already bought three, they can't be that bad for home projects...

I like how you've got an MCSE NT4 book partially propping up your shelving. Brings a new meaning to using pulp books for reinforcing structures....

[GiddyG]

I wish my wife would let me buys loads of cool kit... not that I aint boss in my own house you understand?

[hippy]

Update cha cha cha! *might be doing this my self in 1 1/2 months *

[TechHead.co.uk]

Hi Zebulebu,

How's the ESX project going?

I've also just built up one of my ML110 G4's as an iSCSI Open Filer target. It's been running for a few days now and is running a treat. I've got a blog post drafted up and hope to have it up on the site over the weekend.

Like your set-up in the photo - I wish I had that much space as I still have an ML115 G5 to squeeze in here. One of the problems of living in Central London.



As Arroryn mentioned - like the use for the NT4 book

Let us know how you get on with your ESX lab.

Cheers,


Simon

http://www.techhead.co.uk