venno Posted September 23, 2015 Share #1 Posted September 23, 2015 Hi All Need some guidance on hardware selection. I have a G8 microserver that I want to put ESXi on to run a few VM's: XP Desktop Ubuntu Desktop Mac OSX Desktop Automation server Xpenology NAS I have a raid card, P420, and 4 WD 2TB red drives in the cage in raid 5 for the Xpenology with remaining VM's on 2 ssd in a raid 0. I also would like to add a nic to the Xpenology by using a usb 3 ethernet adaptor on the G8. My question is about cpu requirement, I currently have an i3-3240 with fan in the G8. I have been considering moving to a xeon to gain Vt-d as I am unsure whether normal usb pass thru in ESXi will work for the ethernet adaptor. I have an option to purchase a e3-1220lv2 cpu, would this be sufficient for the setup or should I look for something more powerful such as e3-1230v2? cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
venno Posted October 2, 2015 Author Share #2 Posted October 2, 2015 Got the e3-1220l v2 and usb 3 passthru works and the VM's all run up ok. I have observed though that the VM's seem more sluggish depending on whats going on, the cpu host usage is closer to maxing out at times and it doesn't take much for this happen eg. running some apps on 2 or more vm's plus dsm chugging away 24x7. I guess its to be expected as there are now less MHz available overall compared to the i3 I had been running. May have to hunt around for a 4 core xeon as I don't think i will be able to add more vm's in the present state, I still have half the physical ram available so I'm not done just yet. The new cpu does run significantly cooler though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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