vSphere 5 Homelab - ESX on HP ProLiant N36L/N40L/N54L Microserver
Hewlett Packard has launched an extremely affordable server for SMB and home users. Not only due to its price of approximately 200 euros, but also because of its low power consumption it is an great candidate for a virtualization home lab. An optional Remote Access Card (RAC) can extend ILO similar functions to the server.
The HP N40L has 2 CPU cores and supports up to 8GB of RAM. Although this is quite low for a hypervisor, it should be sufficient for a pure test environment. The server does only have a software-based RAID controller which will not work with the ESX. If you want to use the local disks as an array, you have to buy an additional RAID controller. The P410 for example is supported. I decided not to buy a RAID controller, because I want to store my VMs on an shared Storage. The good news is that the server is shipped with 4 hard drive trays, which allows the installation of any SATA hard drive.
Features
The Server is shipped with the following configuration:
- Prozessor: AMD Turion™ II Neo N40L (2x 1,50GHz)
- Memory: 2GB PC3-10600E UDIMMs DDR3
- Hard Disk: 1x Seagate Barracude (250GB, 7200RPM, SATA)
- LAN: 1x 10/100/1000 MBit (NC107i)
- PSU: 150 Watt, non-redundant
- Ports: VGA, eSATA, 7x USB 2.0 (4x Front, 2x Back, 1x On-Board)
Read More »vSphere 5 Homelab - ESX on HP ProLiant N36L/N40L/N54L Microserver