{"id":138,"date":"2012-01-29T23:24:49","date_gmt":"2012-01-30T05:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/?p=138"},"modified":"2013-04-30T22:26:12","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T04:26:12","slug":"building-a-esxi-5-0-whitebox-server","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/building-a-esxi-5-0-whitebox-server\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a ESXi 5.0 Whitebox Server"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some time, I’ve been contemplating on building a new whitebox server for ESXi 5.0<\/a>, as I have always been interested in virtualization<\/a>. I built a ESXi 4.2 whitebox server last summer, in which I was able to get myself familiarized with ESXi and the VMware vSphere Hypervisor<\/a> client. There were a lot of great features in ESXi 4.2, but my whitebox server at the time was limited in that it didn’t support advanced features such as PCI passthrough (Intel VT-d\/IOMMU<\/a>). My upcoming ESXi 5.0 whitebox server project will be different, as I will be utilizing components that supports IOMMU<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"ESXi<\/p>\n

Gathering spare parts that I already had on hand, as well as purchasing a few cost effective parts, I’ve assembled all that I need to build and test ESXi 5.0 in a home-lab environment. The goal of this project is familiarize myself with the features of ESXi 5.0, as well as exploring advanced virtualization features like IOMMU.<\/p>\n

Processor<\/strong>: AMD Phenom II X4 830<\/a> ($49.99 @ Microcenter<\/a>)
\nMotherboard<\/strong>: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3<\/a> ($109.99 @ Microcenter<\/a>)
\nRAM<\/strong>: 2 x G.Skill F3-12800CL9D-8GBSR Sniper 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3 1600<\/a> (Spare Part)
\nStorage Drives<\/strong>:
\n
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA HDD (Spare Part)
\nWestern Digital WD800AAJS <\/cite>80 GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD (Spare Part)
\nKingston 4 GB SDHC Card (Spare Part)
\nVantec 58-in-1 Internal Card Reader
\nGraphics<\/strong>: Diablotek VARX-8P ATi Rage XL 8MB SDRAM PCI Video Card<\/a> ($11.96 @ Microcenter)
\nNetwork<\/strong>: Realtek RTL8111E (Onboard)
\nOptical<\/strong>: 2 x LITE-ON 24X DVD+-RW Drive (Spare Part)
\nPower Supply Unit<\/strong>: Corsair CMPSU-430CX 430W PSU (Spare Part)
\nCase<\/strong>: Thermal Master TC-102<\/a> ($36.99 @ Microcenter<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The requirements of ESXi 5.0 are largely the same as those of ESXi 4.x, in that it requires a x64-capable CPU and a supported chipset, NIC, and storage controller. vm-help.com<\/a> has an excellent ESXi whitebox component compatibility list, which can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It can be tricky to find out which motherboards support VT-d\/IOMMU, as very few consumer motherboards support this feature. With the help of the whitebox suggestions over at vm-help.com<\/a>, I was able to find a Socket AM3+ IOMMU capable motherboard, the Gigabyte GA-970-UD3<\/a>. According to AMD’s technical specs, the AMD 970, 990X, and 990FX series all support IOMMU, but true support is largely dependent<\/span> if the option is actually available in the BIOS settings and working correctly.<\/p>\n

\"ESXi<\/a>

ESXi 5.0 Whitebox Server… fully constructed.<\/p><\/div>\n

As I continue to explore several ESXi features, I will be adding additional parts onto this build as needed, but for now, these components will do. In the next several posts, I will go over the installation procedure for ESXi 5.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For some time, I’ve been contemplating on building a new whitebox server for ESXi 5.0, as I have always been interested in virtualization. I built a ESXi 4.2 whitebox server last summer, in which I was able to get myself familiarized with ESXi and the VMware vSphere Hypervisor client. There<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[176,177,194,531,171],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it","tag-esxi","tag-esxi-5-0","tag-hypervisor","tag-virtualization","tag-vmware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}