Hello,
I just joined the VMware user group and just got my paid subscription going. I hope I am asking this in the right topic area.
I am self taught with VMWare and have used ESXi 5.5 and just recently built a new server for my home lab with 6.0 and the free license through the regular VMware site.
I was able to get a Power Edge R510 , bios revision 1.12.0 with dual 6 core X5675 3Ghz processors using a Perc6/i integrated bus / SAS / SATA controller.
At the moment, I decided to just build a RAID 5 volume with the 8 2TB hard drives with one on-line spare. Then I loaded the ESXi 6.0 on this volume and also at the moment have my datastore as well on this same volume.
For my lab systems when I want to run VMs, I figure since I would only run maybe 2 VM's at most at any given time, having the ESXi OS and the VMS all running on the same volume might not be a big issue. I need to see if I can use SD card for the OS or flash drive, and keep the OS off the data store and volume of the VMs. The VMs typically run fine, but when I perform say Microsoft Software Patch updates, The Window's 2016 Server VM at times will become non responsive and basically freeze up. The entire VM console stops responding. But just come back in an hour or two and it will be patched up and ready for a reboot.
I checked logs and see read latency as high as 600 to 700ms. In your thoughts, is this maybe due to running the ESXi OS and Vm's from the same drive volume? The system has at the moment 24 gigs ram and by Monday will have 64 Gigs. The 2016 server is configured for 8 gigs so ram is not an issue. I was running into this Latency with just running and patching up a single VM and no other VM's running. Sadly I have limited resources and have to run with SATA, 5400 RPM WD blue drives so the 5400RPM is a bottle neck over say running the 10,000 or 15,000 SAS drives. But again it is my home lab / test systems.
I am thinking of building a new ESXi server with a HP DL360 G7 that is dual 6 core CPU's. I want to run ESXi6.5 on it, and I know the hardware in it will run with it since I tested it out with 6.5. I see the normal free license from VMware for the ESXi 6.5 is one socket and unlimited cores where the 6.0 is two sockets and unlimited cores, so that is why I went with 6.0 on the Dell. I see the HP has a SD card slot and I am going to get a SD card and load ESXi6.5 on it and then just have the drives for the DataStore for the VMs and see if that helps.
Anyone have best practice thoughts concerning my Dell R510 configuration and for building the ESXi 6.5 on my HP DL360?
I have not yet gotten my confirmation information yet to go about downloading the various VMWare Products and their one year license keys yet. Can anyone tell me if the ESXi 6.5 server / hyper visor is available for download and if it's license allows for two sockets and unlimited cores?
I am an I.T. systems analyst, at work and we are 90% Virtual with ESXi5.5 and soon to be going to 6.0. I am working to gain my experience with ESXi and VMware products.
Chad