vSphere/vCloud home lab -- Dell C6100

I have been working with VMware ESX since version 2.5 and Virtual Center/vCenter since version 1 where I work. I tried creating a lab at home a few years ago but my PC just didn't have enough juice. There is only so much you can do with 8 GB of RAM. Last year (2014) while on a VMware course I was talking to one of the instructors about home labs and he clued me in to the Dell C-series cloud servers. He had a C6100 that he bought from eBay and was happy with it.

The benefits of the C6100 are that there are four independent nodes within a single 2U chassis. Each node contains its own processors, RAM, NICs and one PCI slot. Each node is hot-pluggable in the back of the chassis. The HDDs are also hot-pluggable and inserted to the front of the chassis. Each slot is allocated to a specific node: HDD slots 1 to 6 to node 1, HDD slots 7 to 12 to node 2, and so on. It looks like this allocation is hardwired. There are a total of three NICs per node. Two of the NICs are useable by the OS and one is dedicated to the BMC (baseboard management controller) for OOBM (out of band management). The BMC is not the same as iDRAC (Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller), but it does provide the means to act as a IP KVM for remote console access without needing an OS, and control the power (power up, graceful power off, forced power off, reset). Finally, the power requirement is a NEMA 5-15 grounded (Type B) plug which is your normal everyday household plug in North America.

If there is one disadvantage to the C6100 it would be noise. This thing is freakishly loud. I'm used to 1U/2U server noise. This is louder than that. The fans, four in total, are rated at 70 dB. After doing research on what other people are doing about this I came to the conclusion to not to replace the fans. The concern I have is that with so much horse power concentrated into a small space I didn't want to run it hot. I ended up moving the server to my dining room and running a couple of Ethernet cables through the wall. Even then the noise is noticeable, but at least I no longer need to wear ear plugs. Like I said, freakishly loud.

My criteria in choosing this configuration were:

• Something that was server class and was on the ESXi 5.x HCL. Research indicated that this hardware is on the ESXi HCL for version 5.1 Update 1 (need to double-check), and that other people have had success getting ESXi 5.5 working with some additional effort (more later when I get to that).
• SAS HDDs, not SATA, as I wanted to reduce HCL compatibility problems with ESXi.
• SSD HDDs, one per node, for two reasons: (1) there is no cache on the RAID controller, and (2) as I wanted to experiment with VMware vSAN. SSD is only available in SAS which fits nicely with the previous requirement.
• A generous amount of memory, without being prohibitively expensive. I know from experience that this will be the first resource exhausted.
• A selection of HDD speeds to experiment with SDRS. I can always add more storage internally (subject to the power envelope) or externally.
• Low-ish power. Yes, this is a contradiction as this is four server class machines stuffed into a small space which is why I picked low power processors, a reasonable amount of RAM and didn't go HDD crazy.

After doing lots of research I bought the following from NES INTERNATIONAL:

• Quantity = 1
  SYSTEM : DELL POWEREDGE C6100 XS23-TY3 w/ 4 x HOT PLUG NODES 24 x 2.5" BAYS
  PROCESSOR : 8 x INTEL XEON QUAD CORE L5630 2.13GHz 12MB CACHE LOW POWER
  MEMORY : 192GB DDR3 ECC REGD MEMORY (48GB PER NODE)
  HARD DRIVE : 4 x 160GB 2.5" SOLID STATE SSD HARD DRIVE
  NETWROKING : DUAL GIGABIT ETHERNET NIC CONTROLLER
  REMOTE ACCESS : IPMI 2.0 REMOTE MANAGEMENT PORT
  RAID CONTROLLER : LSI 1068E MEZZANINE RAID CONTROLLER Y8Y69
  POWER SUPPLY : DUAL REDUNDANT HOT PLUG POWER SUPPLY
• Quantity = 2
  SYSTEM : DELL POWEREDGE 2950 1950 2970 R900
  HARD DRIVE : 600GB 10K 2.5" 6Gb/s SAS HARD DRIVE
• Quantity = 2
  SYSTEM : DELL POWEREDGE 2950 1950 2970 R900
  HARD DRIVE : 500GB 7.2K 2.5" 6Gb/s SAS HARD DRIVE
• Quantity = 2
  SYSTEM : DELL POWEREDGE 2950 1950 2970 R900
  HARD DRIVE : 146GB 15K 2.5" 6Gb/s SAS HARD DRIVE