2014-04-09T13:23:00Z
it_user98652 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Webhosting at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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Which is the most suitable blade server for VMware ESXi?

Which is the most suitable blade server and storage to install VMware ESXi (5.1, preferably 5.1) on?

Thanks for your help.

10
PeerSpot user
10 Answers
it_user131634 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Expert at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
2014-06-26T04:28:47Z
Jun 26, 2014

We have been using HP Blade for a large environment (800+ VM) Successfully for some years now but if I was to buy all new I would check vBlock or Flexpod solutions.

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it_user2652 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at Bureau Veritas
Vendor
Popular
2014-04-11T19:23:03Z
Apr 11, 2014

I would say to use HP Blades..........I have been using it and getting excellent technical and customer support for it. Also, these days, everything is scalable on hardware level too.

it_user101940 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a manufacturing company
Vendor
2014-04-11T17:16:33Z
Apr 11, 2014

A system that we are looking at it is the Dell VRTX, it is a small enclosure that can fit four blades and includes shared storage. We are an SMB and many of the dedicated SANs are overkill and over priced for our usage. We have a total of 44 vms across 3 hosts using ESX 5.1 currently but not using blades. I've posted i link to the VRTX below. Good luck.
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-vrtx/pd

Vendor
2014-04-11T00:21:59Z
Apr 11, 2014

Well it depends on the environment and your needs. ie: budget and users supported.
Vmware has a HCL which you can go against. I personally line HP Proliant DL or ML series with 32 -64 Gb and mirrored 100 GB Flash Disk for VMware
use ISCSI w at least 4-6 NICS or 10gb FC

Storage NImble Netapp or EMC work best

Hope this helps.
Michael La-B

it_user103896 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Engineer at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2014-04-10T19:46:55Z
Apr 10, 2014

For pure ESXi, I recommend the HP blades with internal ssd for use with vflash. This also works great in 5.5 to boost application performance (learned first-hand). The storage is a little trickier without knowing the proposed workloads. Tintri is what my team has used in the past and seems to be favored when it comes to storage designed for Virtualization. Their new vsan product looks like a good alternative to an external SAN (for small deployments) #2cents.

it_user77823 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
2014-04-10T15:00:24Z
Apr 10, 2014

Way too many unanswered questions. How many guests will there be? How much usable storage is needed. There are different levels of storage appliances that can meet certain criteria. For example, HP has a small size device (Lefthand or MSA). Then you can get into larger appliances like the 3 PAR.
I personally like HP blades, but it depends what model that will meet your needs. Without doing assessments, it is really hard to give a specific option.
ctSanders has touched on a lot of the other questions as well.

I am assuming since you want blades you have a large environment? If you only need a couple of hosts, maybe rack mount servers could be an option as well. It is not cost effective if you only use half an enclosure for blades.

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TL
Professional Services Consultant at Cloudian Inc
Real User
2014-04-10T12:26:14Z
Apr 10, 2014

I like the Dell solution.

it_user3405 - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Reseller
2014-04-10T12:20:59Z
Apr 10, 2014

I forgot, Cisco has a UCS platform as well.

Todd

it_user3405 - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Reseller
2014-04-10T12:17:52Z
Apr 10, 2014

Then I have a question for you before we start answering that question:

Do you have a list of requirements for this endeavor, such as processor speed, disk speed, latency, will there be databases installed on the application, budget/costs? But not only that, what are your storage requirements (IOPS, Speed of disks, replication, vmotion requirements), also, what are the network requirements because you may be looking for NICs that run at 10G or 40G speeds?

There are systems out there to help such as:

• Vblock
• HP Moonshot
• Dell Blade servers
• HP Blade Servers

It really just depends

Please advise.

Todd

Vendor
2014-04-10T12:02:25Z
Apr 10, 2014

IBM HS23.

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