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Overview

I'm planning to build an ESXi server on consumer hardware for a home lab. I'm hoping to get some recommendations on important features for a consumer grade motherboard.

Details

I've only ever run ESX on enterprise class hardware, so I'm not exactly sure what is going to make one consumer grade motherboard better than another. I turn to you, ServerFault community.

The two priority features are:

  • That the MB support 16g ram
  • Consumer grade - ie, ATX-like form factor.

The rest is negotiable. I'm looking for versatility here. The number and types of VMs will vary greatly from week to week.

My two biggest concerns/unknowns are:

  • Are there chipsets/processors that are specifically aimed at improving virtualization performance?
  • I want to account for heavy disk IO. My intention is to use a sata raid controller with disks in Raid 5. Can my motherboard selection impact the overall system disk IO performance?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Edit:

I'm not looking for shopping recommendations. I'm looking for important features and/or technologies that would be beneficial for this project.

xelco52
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1 Answers1

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To be honest, its very difficult to find the parts that are compatible with ESXi. Especially building from scratch. You are way better off going to a site such as ebay for a used desktop of sorts. Personally, I picked up a Dell T5500 for $525 (Dual Quad-Core processors, 16GB of RAM, RAID card). Otherwise your first step will be to check what is compatible and what is not.

JMeterX
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