[HECnet] Sort of off-topic, co-locating area 8

[Dave McGuire]

On 01/23/2013 06:47 AM, John H. Reinhardt wrote:
HP DL360 Gen 5.   I have two I got on Ebay.   Total cost about $1100 US. 
If my Pounds/Dollar conversion is about right, that's about the same as
the DL380 you found.   Two DL360's would fit in the same 2U rack space
and give you some redundancy. Plus a lot more horsepower.
...
I run VMWare ESXi 5 on both.   Why?   Because it's free, it works
reasonably well and I'm lazy.

  There's an even better reason: It's a buttload more efficient, and a
WHOLE lot more stable. (I'm not saying Linux isn't stable, mind
you...but VMware ESXi is absolutely rock-solid and a whole lot simpler.)

It would probably be more efficient to
put a stripped Linux and VirtualBox

  Not even close.   Not even in the same ballpark.   Not even the same
GAME.   ESXi is a very thin hypervisor, while Linux is an entire fat
lumbering kitchen-sink OS with a million potential points of failure.

but it's nice to be able to just
create a VM with a few measly clicks.   The downside is that I have to
run the VMWare vSphere Client on a Windows platform.   In this case it's
Windows 7 running on my Mac Pro inside a VMWare Fusion VM.

  You can do a lot of stuff from the BB shell within ESXi, though the
command structure is somewhat obtuse.   It's handy in emergencies.   If
you're just bringing up or shutting down VMs, etc, it's very easy to
deal with, and you don't need to sully yourself with Winblows and end up
with that "not so fresh" feeling.

                        -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA