Dell PowerEdge R200
My Dell PowerEdge R200 servers arrived yesterday. New hardware is always fun and two servers is twice the funof just one!
The PE R200′s are quite simple. Built in an 1U case, Dell have fitted the servers with two disk drives, a single CPU (in my case, a Xeon X3320, Quad Core 2.5GHz with 2x3MB cache), four RAM slots supporting a maximum of 8Gig, two PCI-E slots (x8 and x4) and two NICs (Broadcom NetExtreme BCM5721). The SATA controller is the Intel CH9 chipset. More information is available at Dell’s site. For those interested I have some pictures in my gallery.
After some fooling around with the hardware, changing one of the disk drives (from 80GB -> 640GB), adding an Intel PRO1000 PT Dual Port NIC and 4Gigs of RAM in both the servers they were ready for some experimenting.
As the goals is to learn virtualization software, I downloaded the VMware ESXi Installable ISO and burned it to a CDRW. The installation is surprisingly fast – you just have to select which disk drive it should install to and then you are done. Everything is done in just a few minutes. Installing the VMWare ESX 3.5 is more advanced with a lot of unnecessary choices (time zone, keyboard language etc.) because of the service console.
Given the choice between the fast, uncustomizable install and the slow, customizable, I usually select the customizable one because of the fear of having to customize the install afterward. A lot of the choices done in the install is often hidden in config files and databases after the install is done, so I just take the hard way during the install to save time later on. But, with ESXi, there are not a lot of options to customize. If I first wish to run a hypervisor as the operating system, I do not need support for running Linux or Windows on the same host at the same time, I can just run them as virtual machines. Therefore, it is no problem that the install wishes to use the whole disk for VMWare. The clock synchronization issue is solved by using NTP and I really do not care about the keyboard language as I am using VMvare Infrastructure Client to manage the host. As long as the system recognizes my password locally I am happy. VMware have done quite a nice job to hide a lot of the unnecessary questions with ESXi. All the relevant options are available after the install by logging on to the service program locally. As it turned out, I only had to change the NIC for management and set a root password.
Another nice feature with ESXi is that it has its own interface for hardware monitoring. This is something ESX 3.5 is missing and requires me to install a third party package in the service console for IPMI support.
So, if you ask me, I would say that ESXi is the way to go with hypervisors. Out with huge packages with their own operating system for management, in with small, easy installable packages. I wonder if I could make the ESXi network installable so that I do not have to fiddle around with CDs….
Posted: July 1st, 2008 under Hardware, VMware by Frode.
Comments: 17
Comments
Comment from Roel
Time: August 4, 2008, 11:38 pm
Did you had to make some changes in the bios to get ESXi to work on your R200s ?
I received mine a few days ago (with more or less the same config), but whenever I try to install the new free ESXi on them, I get the error message that the image cannot be written to the hard disk and that I have to reboot
Comment from Frode Sandholtbråten
Time: August 8, 2008, 11:41 pm
No, I didn’t, but I didn’t install the 3.5U2 neither. I installed the 3.5U1 which worked nicely. I will try 3.5U2 after I’m done testing out MS Hyper-V and give you an answer :-)
Comment from Azeem
Time: August 29, 2008, 1:09 am
I am getting the Can’t write to device error. But in Bios I disabled all the SATA drives. I just have one IDE drive connected which I am trying to test this out on. Any idea why I am getting this error? I am using a Dell Poweredge SC1430, others have reported that were able to make it work. maybe I should try using an older version too? instead of U2? where can I find the old files?
Comment from Frode Sandholtbråten
Time: August 29, 2008, 9:13 am
Sorry, I have no idea – but, you say that you only have PATA drives?
Comment from Foo
Time: January 7, 2009, 5:08 am
Hi, can you advise? I’m able to install ESX 3.5 on my R200, but I can’t seem to make my SATA CDROM drive available for my virtual machines. Under the CDROM options, there isn’t any host drives available. Did you have to install a separate driver?
Thanks.
Comment from Frode Sandholtbråten
Time: January 7, 2009, 5:25 pm
I don’t have it neither. I haven’t noticed this since I’m only using ISO images :-)
Comment from Matthew Saggers
Time: February 4, 2009, 5:15 pm
I had 2 R200 servers turn up.
Server 1 : QC E3220 2.4GHz , 8GB ram , 600GB SATA HDD
Server 2 : QC E3220 2.4GHz , 1GB ram , 149GB SATA HDD
do you know why server 1 is installed fine and server 2 gives me the same error as Roel. just seem very odd may have to ask dell about there servers but they are both from the same batch so should be as heart identical acorrding to the dell spec.
Comment from Frode Sandholtbråten
Time: February 4, 2009, 5:17 pm
Sorry, no idea. Have you tried to exchange the disk drives? It might be related to the disk drives..(?)
Comment from moog
Time: March 25, 2009, 6:20 am
Hi Frode and thank you especially for your pictures inside the beast.
I’ll probably will buy a PowerEdge R200 and I would like to have your opinion about the noise of this 1u rack server. Later
Comment from Frode Sandholtbråten
Time: March 25, 2009, 11:27 am
The fan speed is regulated in accordance with the temperature. The servers do not make that much noise compared to my file server, but I would not recommend that you try to sleep in the same room as the R200′s :-)
Comment from moog
Time: March 26, 2009, 3:57 pm
Actually I didn’t plan to put this server under my bed but in the living room with a linux-vserver system, and I have no idea about the noise. I have experience with HP Proliant DL servers and they sound like an Airbus at take off :p So I count about your experience of the R200 to tell me if it could be a bad idea, like having a washing machine near a hifi set :p
Thank you again
Comment from Frode Sandholtbråten
Time: March 26, 2009, 4:35 pm
Well, I don’t recommend putting the server in a room where you will be living in or watching TV. But, I am sensitive to fan noise… :-) My fans are currently at 3000 RPM with an ambient temperature of 26C. The Prolient servers are a generating a lot more noise, especially those where the fans are not temperature controlled :-)
Comment from asimil8
Time: April 15, 2009, 3:54 am
FYI
3.5 Update 3 | 2008/11/06 | Build: 123629 works fine with Dell Poweredge R200
Tried 3.5 Update 4 | 2009/03/30 | Build: 153875 and it didn’t like it. (also R200 is not in the compatibility list for this build)
Comment from nick
Time: June 3, 2009, 6:06 pm
hello,
I tried to install esxi4 on my new r200. It didnt happen, the linux logo would appear,as the OS was loading from a boot ISO and then nothing……………..do you reckon I should have a go with 3.5.? ……….have you tried 4 ( I think it recommends for 64bit hardware) ..thanks
nick
Comment from Sebastian
Time: July 10, 2009, 10:13 am
Hi, do you have any experience with the SAS 6iR internal RAID Controller from DELL or don’t you use RAID with the ESXi? thx
Comment from Frode Sandholtbråten
Time: July 10, 2009, 1:11 pm
Sorry, I don’t use the SAS 6iR – I have iSCSI instead :-)
Pingback from Dell PowerEdge R200 and ESX or ESXi – Iam8up Blog
Time: June 7, 2010, 9:53 pm
[...] This blog suggests it works with ESXi 3.5u1. I can verify that it does NOT work with ESXi 3.5u5. [...]
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