{"id":1022,"date":"2013-02-06T20:54:04","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T19:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bussink.ch\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2018-05-23T17:57:20","modified_gmt":"2018-05-23T15:57:20","slug":"2013-homelab-refresh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bussink.ch\/?p=1022","title":{"rendered":"2013 Homelab refresh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Preamble<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s now 2013, and it’s time to have a peak at my homelab refresh for this year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Background<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the past three years, I’ve ran a very light homelab with VMware ESXi. I mainly used my workstation (Supermicro X8DTH-6F<\/a>) with Dual Xeon 5520<\/a> @2.26Ghz (8-Cores) and 72GB of RAM to run most of the virtual machines and for testing within VMware Workstation, and only ran domain controllers and 1 proxy VM on a small ESXi machine, a Shuttle XG41<\/a>. This gives a lot of flexibilty to run nearly all the virtual machines on a large beefed up workstation. There are quiet a few posts on this topic on various vExpert websites (I highly recommend Eric Sloof’s Super-Workstation<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I sometimes do play games (I’m married with a gamer), and when I do I have to ensure my virtual machines are powered down within VMware Workstation, as my system could and has crashed during games. Having corrupted VM is no fun.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Requirements<\/strong><\/p>\n

What I want for 2013 in the homelab, is a flexible environment composed of a few quiet ESXi hosts with my larger workstation being able to add new loads or test specific VM configuration. For this I need a infrastructure that is small, quiet and stable. Here are the requirements for my 2013 homelab infrastructure<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Wife Acceptance Factor<\/strong> (WAF<\/a>)<\/li>\n
  2. Small<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Quiet<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Power Efficient<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Having purchased a flat, I don’t have a technical room (nothing like my 2006 computer room<\/a>) or a basement. So having a few ESXi hosts on 24 hours a day, requires a high Wife Acceptance Factor. The system have to be small & quiet. In addition, if they are power efficient, it will make the utility bill easier.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Shuttle XH61V<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The Shuttle XH61V<\/a> is small black desktop based on the Intel H61 chipset. It comes in a 3.5L metal case with very quiet ventilators. You just need to purchase the Shuttle XH61V, a Intel 1155 Socket 65W processor<\/a>, two memory SODIMMs (laptop memory) and local storage. Assembly can be done in less than 30 minutes.<\/p>\n

    \"Shuttle<\/a>

    Shuttle XH61V<\/p><\/div>\n

    The Shuttle XH61V comes with two NICs and support for a mSATA (Bootable) connector, a PCIe x1 slot, and two 2.5″ Devices. The Shuttle XH61V comes with two gigabit network cards. They are Realtek 8168 cards. These work flawlessly, but they do not support Jumbo frames.<\/p>\n

    \"Shuttle<\/a>

    Shuttle XH61V Back<\/p><\/div>\n

    For storage, I decided to boot from a mSATA device, and to keep a Intel SSD for a fast upper-tier local storage, and one large Hybrid 2.5″ Harddisk for main storage.\u00a0I do have a Synology DS1010+<\/a> on the network that is the centralized NFS storage, but I want some fast local storage for specific virtual machines. It’s still early 2013, so I have not yet upgraded my older Synology or created a new powerful & quiet Nexenta Community Edition<\/a> home server. On the next image you can see that three Shuttle XH61V take less space than a Synology DS1010+<\/p>\n

    \"Three<\/a><\/p>\n

    VMware ESXi installation<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Installing VMware ESXi is done quickly as all the devices drivers are on the ESXi 5.1 VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.1.0-799733.x86_64.iso install cdrom.<\/p>\n

    \"ESXi<\/a>

    ESXi 5.1 on XH61V<\/p><\/div>\n

    Here is the Hardware Status for the Shuttle XH61V<\/p>\n

    \"ESXi<\/a><\/p>\n

    Here is an updated screenshot of my vSphere 5.1 homelab cluster.<\/p>\n

    \"Management<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Bill of Materials (BOM)<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Here is my updated bill of materials (BOM) for my ESXi nodes.<\/p>\n