best Server Environment (esxi or proxmox)

[myhtpc]

I hope this Post / thread is Not too off topic.

 

I bought my new Hardware to build my XPenology Server and it is currently running with DSM 3.2 3211+

Here is my Hardware:

INTEL DH87RL mobo

i5-4570 CPU

1x 8 GB RAM

Bequiet L7-300W PSU

3x 4TB WD Red HDDs

It is running with 20,5W idle (HDDs in Hypernation)

 

 

To prepare myself for the upcoming 4.3, I'd like to move to a virtualized environment.

I have an Intel SSD from my old Laptop which I could use as System- and VM Disk.

 

I already did some testing with esxi 5.5, but the H87 chipset is not fully supported with regard to SATA passthrough, but I want to give XPenology the Full controll on the disks.

Here are my two alternatives:

Buying a IBM M1015 HBA for the disks an keep on trying esxi or

Giving proxmox a try

 

What would you suggest with respect to:

Energysaving capabilities (my Hardware has been tested by the german ct Magazine with 10W idle under Win8)

PCIe, HDD and USB passthrough

VM Management. (Windows Client isn't a Problem; I am no Linux expert and want to administer as much as possible by graphical frontend)

Beside XPenology, I want to Run potentially another Win8, Win 2012 essentials for SW testing

 

All suggestions are highly welcome

[technolo-g]

Hi,

 

I have the same hardware (CT 19/13 project), but I didn't installed a baremetall hypervisor like ESXi. Instead I'm running Windows 7 x64 with VMware Workstation 9 for best multimedia and energysaving options. XPEnology 4.2-3211 (Trantor's 1.2 beta2a viewtopic.php?f=2&t=558 ) runs as a vm with a virtual vmxnet3 NIC (10GBit) and raw disk access to a Samsung HD203WI 2TB HDD. I think 30-50 MB/s data throughput to a single disk is ok, for this configuration.

[myhtpc]

Hi technolo-g,

 

What is your idle Power consumption with this Setup?

[technolo-g]

Hi myhtp,

 

my pc is connected to a 55" Samsung TV in the living room and with a long hdmi cable to a display in my home office. Also the current configuration is not clean, because I have taken the os installtion on my ssd from my parent pc. So I think the power consumption will be lower without the current configuration.

 

16 W when hdd spins down (without vms)

20 W runnning XPEnology vm / hdd never spins down, same as without the vm and disk access, so there is no difference when the vm is in idle mode

 

At the moment the hdd has no chance to spindown with XPEnolgy, because i have everything installed from the package center for testing but I don't know if spin down with vmware workstation rdm works at all.