Hello all!

I came across your whitebox list, and it is going to be a HUGE help for building a second computer to run ESXi on. I'm doing some certifications, and one of the labs requires 7 simultaneously running machines, 6 in server 08, and 1 in Server 03 enterprise with SQL so my current one could use a little backup.

Anyway,.. To the good stuff, I noticed my current server is not on your list, so I figured I could contribute.

It is a Dell SC1425 with dual Xeon 3.0 Ghz processors.

Everything went well with the install, the NIC even worked great EXCEPT,.. the Raid function does not work. Even if you setup raid, it will see two separate drives; however the SATA controller does function.

It has 5 Gigs of ram, and I'm able to usefully run about 5 servers off it before it starts to get too sluggish for my practice exercises.

Hope this helps!
Whiskey

I should add that I have used both ESXi 4.0 and 4.1 on this system.

Whiskey

Hi I'm thinking of getting a DELL SC1425, Did you think of adding a Perc 5/i RAID controller as then RAID would work on your SATA drives?

I assume you just have ESXi installed on one SATA drive and your VMs stored on this one drive?

Thanks

The 5i is a good choice as it is LSI based so you'll get disk / hardware health data in the vSphere client. The ESXi install disk is very low I/O so I wouldn't dedicate a disk to it. Plus it uses less than 5 GB of space.

Hi

I am in the same boat.

Did you manage to get RAID working on the 1425 without the PERC?

Cheers

Daren

i have a 1425 with a single 1tb sata so from what im reading esxi4 should work correct? how do i go about installing it without issues.

i have a 1425 was worried i couldnt run esxi. but your post put some hope back into my lab project. did you have to do anything special to install it? i am not running raid just a single 1tb sata hd with 8gb of ram.

For anyone interested in this model running esxi 4.1 it works. To install it isnt anything special just burn the esxi iso to a cd and pop it in to the server. Then reboot follow any prompts. I cant speak of raid but I know it works on 1 sata hard drive with onboard controller. Havent tried running 64bit os's on it but it works for call manager.