Our webserver has been migrated from a standalone linux server to a virtual machine on VMware server. Check out the specs:
- VMware ESXi 4.0
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700
- 6 GB DDR-II Memory
- 5x Intel Gigabit NIC
- 3ware 9650SE RAID Controller
- Patriot 8 GB Flash Drive (ESXi OS)
- 4x 500 GB Seagate 7200.12 Hard Drives in RAID5 (VM Datastore)
nice setup. How reliable is that ESXi 4.0 ?
I currently have a smoothwall box running and I want to add a WHS instance. I was wondering if I could combine the two on one machine and that’s where ESXi 4.0 would come in.
How would WHS play along with multiple discs ? Is that configurable on ESXi 4.0 ?
ESXi is super reliable, the server hasn’t been down for any reason except due to power outages. Right now I’m running this webserver, Smoothwall, and Windows servers on the it. I also run WHS, but it is on it’s own physical box (the second server in the pic.) You could run WHS as a VM on ESXi, but you lose the RAID like file redundancy. I’m not sure how you allow the WHS instance to see multiple disks, probably by creating multiple stores for ESXi.
very slick. When I look at the vmware site it says xeon cpu’s are compatible. I take it many more cpu’s are supported.
Smoothwall takes so little cpu and whs will be idling most of the times as well. I guess a core 2 duo with enough memory will do just fine ? I have a core 2 duo e6600 that might go towards a server for this.
An e6600 should be fine. The processor and ram really just depend on how many VMs you plan on running. Smoothwall doesn’t take much CPU at all. Also make sure you get the smoothwall VM image to install rather than using the ISO. I tried the ISO a few times and couldn’t get it to work properly.
What about network cards ? I’ve played around a bit with xen (citrix) and can’;t get the network cards to work.
When I first setup the ESXi server only the NIC integrated in my motherboard worked correctly, and I couldn’t setup any VMs. I had to download and install the vSphere CLI utility and manually install the Intel drivers. It was a huge pain. I haven’t used Xen server at all. Are you using the Xen server as a virtual machine in ESXi or using it as your main VM manager?
I have tried to use Xen server as the main server (the citrix version). It just didn’t recognize any of the network cards. The built in ones nor the cheapie dlinks I added. Their list of supported cards is very limited. They do have an SDK kit so you can compile your own drivers but I’ve had zero luck in getting that accomplished. Support on their site is spotty.
My latest effort is an install of debian on which I run XEN. Installed an instance of smoothwall. Was able to run setup and it did see the network cards ! However, on reboot I now get a LILO error when smoothwall boots up. Still need to look into that. Once it is passed that step it SHOULD work.