This is part 4 of the HP Proliant Microserver N36L series.
Yesterday night I started the download of Microsoft Windows Small Business 2011 Standard Edition
(here is the downloadlink).
To be able to do the download you need to have a windows live login.
The download uses a java download manager which for me did not work very well
(the regular firefox download manager works much better).
Eventually the download (tried a couple of times) did start.
Total filesize of the iso is about 6,5 GB.
This morning I created the first vm. I was unaware of the minimal diskspace so I created a vdisk of 100GB. During the installation of Microsoft SBS 2011 I found out that the minmal vdisk value is 120 GB.
I resized the vdisk and did the installation again.
The installation of the OS is a breeze, ready within 15 minutes.
The second part (exchange, updates, etc.) is a different peace of cake, takes in or about 45 minutes.
One big advantage: the installation requires very little user intervention.
After the installation I installed the VMware tools for better performance.
The vm performs reasonably well: cpu low, memory at 3,5 GB.
Later this week I will add a win7 client vm.
Now some screenshots of the vm installation:
1. The initial vm settings:
2. The upload of the 6,5GB Win SBS 2011 iso from pc to server (2-3 minutes on Gbit lan)
3. Mount the iso to the vm
4. Don’t forget to select “connect at power on”
5. The finished vm
Happy scripting/building.
Best regards,
Dirk Adamsky
Hey Dirk,
Great stuff you’r doing there! Reading through the 4 parts of your VMware experience, got me wishing I had my own. I’m planning on building a similar project, perhaps without the RAID card. I have some experience with VMware, but none with RAID cards. Also, I am eager to hear about the performance of your VM’s. Is there any way I can get in contact with you and ask you a couple of questions about your setup, or just have a chat about it? I filled in my email address through the comments, so leave me a mail if you will.
ps: I’m dutch too, so that should be very straightforward
Dirk,
Does ESXi 4.1 accept the RAID properly? Have you tried more than two drives?
I’d really like to do RAID5 across four 750GB drives, but that isn’t an option. Could I do two RAID1 volumes (750GB x 2, 2TB x 2) and have both recognized properly by VMware?
Thanks!
–
John G. Gauthier
Hi John,
yes it does.
Right now i only have the WD raptors 300GB inside, but i am sure that a second RAID1 volume is no problem. The p410 will handle it properly.
Best regards,
Dirk Adamsky
Hi Dirk,
how is the Performance with 4-6 VM´s ? What is the total amount of VM´s you have tested?
Hi Chris,
I only tested the n36l with 2 vm’s.
With the p410 and the velociraptors they were working fine.
I would say that 4 vm’s will work fine also.
That said: the vm’s should not be too cpu intensive, most servers aren’t but webservers certainly are.
The n36l would be much nicer with a quad core cpu.
Best regards,
dirk adamsky
Hey Dirk!
Great post! I’ve been looking for such a solution a long time. I never thougt, it had the performance to run two vm (i’d like Server 2008 as dc and another one with exchange). Would the performance be sufficient for an network with 15 people? Some of my small business clients are afraid of big noisy serverracks, and that would be a perfect solution… What do you think about the new minimac i7 quadcore-Server and it’s compatibility with esxi 4.1 / 5 beta?
Best regards,
Mattes
Hi Mattes,
The n36l is not sufficient for a network with 15 people.
I would say 5-10 concurrent users max.
The big issue is the weak cpu.
With a quad core cpu it would be no problem.
A normal server makes indeed a lot more noise especially the rackmountable ones.
My server customers do have special servers rooms.
The minimac seems nice, especially with ssd’s.
Unfortunately i do not have any experience with apple server hardware (hp fanboy for years now).
Maybe one of the other readers can help us….
Best regards,
dirk adamsky