+ThePhoenix Subscriber² Posted November 23, 2014 Subscriber² Share Posted November 23, 2014 Evening guys, Just ordered a new HP Microserver Gen8 with 16GB RAM to replace my ageing N40L Microserver. Fancy trying something different this time and have used ESXi at workplaces in the past, so going to load it on my new microserver, give me a bit of flexibility to experiment and play with new systems. Now I know there were a few issues with getting ESXi to run properly on the old N40L, though it could be done, but I decided not to bother in that case and just went with running a normal server os to run a small domain at home and host media files and such. So, I guess what I am asking is are there any issues or anything I should know when thinking of running 5.5 on the new microserver when it comes? I would be willing to bet there's a few of you out there already running this setup :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reap3r Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 Hey, VM have created a ESXi image specifically for the HP Microserver Gen8 with including kernel mods and drivers. Took me less than 15 mins to have it up and running. Message me if you have trouble finding the image. It should be under the downloads section on the ESX section of the VM site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted November 24, 2014 Veteran Share Posted November 24, 2014 Moved to Virtualization & Cloud Services Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ThePhoenix Subscriber² Posted November 24, 2014 Author Subscriber² Share Posted November 24, 2014 I have the customised HP Image for ProLiant Servers, is that the one or is there one specific for the MicroServers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+John Teacake MVC Posted November 24, 2014 MVC Share Posted November 24, 2014 I got it to run ok on my NL40 Microserver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted November 24, 2014 MVC Share Posted November 24, 2014 "Now I know there were a few issues with getting ESXi to run properly on the old N40L" Where did you read what - I have esxi running on my N40L without any issues at all, have been running all versions of 5 and 5.5 on it.. Can not remember if started with 4 or not? I did install a mod bios to get full speed on the other sata ports, added a ssd using the other internal sata port, and have it mounted where the optical drive would go. So I have 4 disks, and 1 SSD in it. I bumped the memory to 8gb, and add dual nic, and single nic for a total of 4. I raw map disks to my vm running windows 7 that I use as my file server/storage box. Great that you wanted to get a new one, what are you doing with your old n40l?? Selling it? I hear there can be problems with fan noise on the gen8 -- http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6032-g8-microserver-be-aware-of-fan-issue-add-in-cards/ Have fun, and if you need any advice on running esxi on microsevers, just ask.. I have multiple VMs running 24/7/365 - my router runs on there, my wifi controllers, my storage - logging with cacti, graylog syslog vm, etc. etc.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Fahim S. MVC Posted November 24, 2014 MVC Share Posted November 24, 2014 whilst you didn't need a custom build of ESXi for the N36/40/54L, my understanding is that you do need one for the Gen8 to ensure you have a driver for the P400-based RAID controller. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted November 24, 2014 MVC Share Posted November 24, 2014 I don't think you need to use their image - you can just download driver from here for example http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?sp4ts.oid=4091412&docId=emr_na-c04347712-1&docLocale=en_US Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ThePhoenix Subscriber² Posted November 24, 2014 Author Subscriber² Share Posted November 24, 2014 Thanks guys. Yeah BudMan, thought you might pop in :-) Dunno, it's a while back now but I thought there were some throughput issues that's all, maybe I was wrong. Either way taking the opportunity to upgrade lol. Yeah, will be selling my existing N40L with the 8GB RAM I put in it to a work colleague, and simply moving over the 4 x 1tb disks and the SSD I mounted in the optical bay, lol, same thing as you. Guess I'll see on the noise, I don't notice the N40L, it's in my bedroom, and I generally have a fan running overnight in the room to keep it cool so don't notice when other stuff is also making noise lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted November 24, 2014 MVC Share Posted November 24, 2014 Um what I noticed was a bit of bottleneck when you share the vmkern with same physical nic as normal vswitch. When moving files to and from the datastore in this sort of setup it is a bit slow, but this is just because the vmkern is shared. If you put it on its own interface it flys.. When in the shared setup normal vms using the shared vswitch do not have the bottleneck, its the flow to the datastore that is hindered. Not a issue to be honest since you rarely need to move stuff to and from the datastore. But if you put in more nics then you can break vmkern on to its own nic and not have the problem. If you were in the US I might be interested in buying it ;) Have fun with your new gen8, let us know how it works out and any esxi questions, lots of people here running this sort of setup I do believe - not sure how many on gen8, but the older n36, 40 and 54 lots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T3X4S Posted November 24, 2014 Share Posted November 24, 2014 Can someone explain to me where the ESxi comes in on the virtual machines? Is it the GUI (front end) to manage all of them, or something else entirely ?We had Esxi 5.0 vSphere at a place where I used to work, but to me, it just seemed like a different way to view/work with the VMs.Thanks, and I apologize if this is considered a thread hijack, I will gladly start my own thread if need be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted November 24, 2014 Veteran Share Posted November 24, 2014 esxi is the vm os if you will. you have to do some of the management features via the cli which is *nix based, otherwise the rest of it is done through either the web interface or through the client application that gets installed on a computer. VMWare is trying to do away with the client application and go strictly web. You can no longer fully manage the guest OSes in the client app any more. You have what is called a host OS which is esxi or hyper-v or one of the many other hypervisor oses. Then you have guest oses, these are your windows servers, workstations, linux, unix, etc machines that are guests to that host. You can have several dozen or a few hundered guest oses on your hypervisor or hypervisor farm. In the picture below 192.168.100.179 is the vm host that has esx 4.0.0.0 (esxi is the current version, they no longer make esx) and everything below it is a guest. They can be windows servers, workstations, etc. This is the client app that is used to manage the guest oses up until vsphere 5.5. The vm hypervisor uses very little resources on the physical machine giving almost all of the resources to the guests which is why it is a better solution than running a fat hyper-v host where it needs quite a bit of resources for the host os. You can get away with 2GB or ram and about 2GB of hard drive space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted November 24, 2014 MVC Share Posted November 24, 2014 Client still manages vms just fine on 5.5, if you update to version 10 hardware version for you vms, then you can not edit. But is real simple to update them to 10, then back them down to 9 via ssh to the esxi host. As you can see running latest build of 5.5 While I agree you could call esxi the OS of the vms as sc302 put it, keep in mind it is very basic os with really only function is to manage the vms, and their access to the hardware. It uses very little resources of the host. Leaving as much of the horsepower as possible for the vms you run on the hardware. You can also manage the neworking, vswitches, what physical nics connect to what vswitches. What vms connect to what vswitches, etc.. That allow your vms to talk to the real physical network, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted November 24, 2014 Veteran Share Posted November 24, 2014 You also need the version 10 if you are going to go above the 2TB limit on the vms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T3X4S Posted November 24, 2014 Share Posted November 24, 2014 OK, for some reason I was always thinking VMWare was the OS, but its just software that runs on Esxi. Where does vSphere come in to play ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Fahim S. MVC Posted November 24, 2014 MVC Share Posted November 24, 2014 VMWare is the company. ESXi is the VMware type 1 hypervisor product (also called vSphere Hypervisor). vCenter is a management server which can manage multiple ESXi servers (including high availability between them if you are licensed to) as well as providing a web based UI. T3X4S 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted November 24, 2014 Veteran Share Posted November 24, 2014 OK, for some reason I was always thinking VMWare was the OS, but its just software that runs on Esxi. Where does vSphere come in to play ? vsphere is made up of the esxi hypervisor and the vcenter server to encompass everything vm. vcenter server manages the storage and the vmhosts as well as all other features of the vmhosts. It is also what orchestrates the entire vm environment. Think of it as an outside node that keeps an eye on things. Depending on your host licensing, it will allow you to slip guests between physical hosts and storage without powering down the guest OS. It will also fail over at a complete hardware system failure to another physical host provided that you have the right licensing. But you need vcenter server to do this, it cannot be done from an individual host. There are 4 different license modes. There is the free hypervisor, which is limited. Then you have the essentals, standard, and enterprise license models. Each costing more than the previous as well as adding more features like FT/HA and backup. Here is essentials: http://store.vmware.com/store/vmware/en_US/pd/productID.282883900 Here is standard and enterprise: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/compare It is also good to note that you are limited to 3 hosts or 6 processors with essentials, but standard and enterprise you pay for each physical processor socket that you have available to use (how many cores each physical processor has is irrelevant). T3X4S 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ThePhoenix Subscriber² Posted November 24, 2014 Author Subscriber² Share Posted November 24, 2014 Yeah, I much prefer this to Hyper-V, but my current company tends to use that with our clients, I miss VMWare ESXi, though it would be overkill for most of our guys, both in need and in cost lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted November 24, 2014 Veteran Share Posted November 24, 2014 hyper-v is a great alternative esp if you are a windows shop. It is much cheaper if you use the datacenter edition and have a ton of guest oses. If you only have a few guest oses, either the microsoft free hypervisor or the vmware hypervisor would work. Yeah, I much prefer this to Hyper-V, but my current company tends to use that with our clients, I miss VMWare ESXi, though it would be overkill for most of our guys, both in need and in cost lol Essentials is pretty affordable with being able to support multiple servers. Essentials plus will put you back into the few thousand $$$ area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ThePhoenix Subscriber² Posted November 24, 2014 Author Subscriber² Share Posted November 24, 2014 Yeah, to be fair, most of our clients basically usually have just a couple of low end vm's in hyper-v, one dedicated to managing printers, another to manage their AV solution. If we were doing anything on a bigger scale, especially in house, I would certainly fight to go VMWare instead Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokkolm Posted November 25, 2014 Share Posted November 25, 2014 You can no longer fully manage the guest OSes in the client app any more. They've said that, but try managing a version 10 VM with the latest version of the thick client and you will notice that you can do everything. +BudMan 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted November 25, 2014 MVC Share Posted November 25, 2014 ^ really?? Well WTF!!! Nice I have to look into what is actually restricted.. Since yes quick check looks like you can do most stuff Before you could not do anything - now it looks like most is there.. edit: Seems the only issue is that annoying popup that seems you can not get rid of ;) But I have bumped all my to 10 ;) Thanks for the info, not sure how I missed that big news about the latest update. +InsaneNutter and Praetor 2 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ThePhoenix Subscriber² Posted November 25, 2014 Author Subscriber² Share Posted November 25, 2014 Good, I used both the web client and the normal one at the workplace I looked after it for, and far prefer the main client. Just could not get on with the web version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokkolm Posted November 25, 2014 Share Posted November 25, 2014 ^ really?? Well WTF!!! Nice I have to look into what is actually restricted.. Since yes quick check looks like you can do most stuff nice-didntnotice.png Before you could not do anything - now it looks like most is there.. editvm10.png edit: Seems the only issue is that annoying popup that seems you can not get rid of ;) But I have bumped all my to 10 ;) Thanks for the info, not sure how I missed that big news about the latest update. updatedtovmx10.png They didn't announce it. They appeasing us until 6.0 drops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted November 25, 2014 MVC Share Posted November 25, 2014 So curious when 6 drops if client still going to work. Hope so or going to have to start looking at other options other than vm to be honest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts