ESXi server build for home.

D

devman

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 3, 2005
Messages
2,400
I've been lurking in this and the storage subforms for awhile to research a home server build. I'd love some feedback on what I've got so far.

Usage would be for an ESXi server running two VMs.
First VM would be OpenIndiana setup to be my NAS running a ZFS filesystem.
Second VM would be a Linux OS (Either Arch or CentOS haven't decided yet).


CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz
Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-O
RAM:Kingston 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 ECC Unbuffered

For storage initially I was thinking of grabbing a SYBA SY-PEX40039 PCI-Express 2.0 SATA III for the boot drive and using VT-d to passthrough the internal SATA control to the OI VM for ZFS. The configuration would not be optimal but at least it would work I think.

Eventually I'd like to get a Intel SASUC8I SAS RAID Controller running in JBOD mode and pass that through to the OI VM instead of the mobo's controller. I'd put some WD REDs on it 3 or 4 of the 2TB disks (haven't settled on a final storage config yet).

I've never used a RAID controller card before (or any RAID level software or hardware) so this is new territory to me but I think the SASUC8I is a good choice based on what I've read. Please correct me if I messed that up!

Comments/Criticism would be appreciated.
 
Since the board has a USB port internally, you could always just use a USB key for your boot drive. Passing through built-in controllers does not always work very well.
 
I'd suggest spending the additional ~$30 and get the X9SCM-F or X9SCM-iiF with IPMI.

Additionally, both of the NICs on the SCM-iiF will be supported out of the box with ESXi. Only one of them will with the SCM and SCM-F. You need to roll a driver into your ESXi install .iso to get both NICS supported on those "older" boards. At least this was the case with ESXi 5.0. I'm not sure if anything changed with 5.1 .

BTW, Newegg doesn't carry the iiF version of the board.
 
SuperBiz says in specs for the X9SCM-iiF has "Dual Intel 82579LM Gigabit Ethernet Controller" which seems like they are not supported by ESXi. I'm guessing that is an error in the listing?

Even if the NIC isn't supported by ESXi I can still pass it through to a VM right?

McTurkey said:
Since the board has a USB port internally, you could always just use a USB key for your boot drive. Passing through built-in controllers does not always work very well.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up about built-in controllers. Since the original setup isn't optimal anyway I may just configure storage in ESXi initially instead and do passthrough when I add a SASUC8I and more harddrives.
 
So I'm assuming you use the -iiF variant with ESXi and everything works great?
 
Bumping this thread...

X9SCL+-F seems to have mixed reviews.. Is there another reliable board out there?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top