September 13th, 2010 
Simon Seagrave 
In Episode 7 of our vChat series, Eric Siebert, David Davis and myself discuss the process of moving from ESX to ESXi, the new HP MicroServer and whether it’d make for being a good vSphere lab server and also the recently announced rather cool looking vSphere iPad Apps.
The full list of links discussed in this video can be found below…
vChat is a regular virtualization video chat covering VMware vSphere, Cloud Computing, Virtualization News, and maybe some geeky humor. Regular contributors are 3 vExperts – Simon Seagrave (TechHead.co.uk), Eric Siebert (vSphere-Land.com), and David Davis (VMwareVideos.com).
Sponsored by VMware vSphere Video Training from Train Signal.com
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Here are links that we discussed in this episode:
- Eric’s post – Upgrading from ESX to ESXi in 7 Steps
- Kendrick Coleman: The Migration From ESX to ESXi is Happening. Moving Configurations. Part I
- Kendrick Coleman: The Migration From ESX to ESXi is Happening. Moving Configurations. Part II
- Kendrick Coleman – ESXi 4.1 Kickstart Configuration
- New HP Proliant MicroServer – a decent vSphere lab server candidate? by Simon Seagrave of TechHead.co.uk
- HP Microserver – HP’s new Itty Bitty Microserver the Little Server that Couldn’t by Eric Siebert at vSphere-Land.com
- VIDEO: New vSphere 4.1 ESX and ESXi Active Directory Authentication by David Davis
- VIDEO: New vSphere 4.1 ESXi Tech Support Mode and Remote Tech Support mode by David Davis
- Using the new VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) by David Davis
- VMware iPad management application for vCenter
- VMworldTV – Preview of Project Horizon
- Brian Madden: Why VMware “Project Horizon” (formerly “Origami”) is super awesome
- What you Missed at VMworld by Aaron Sweemer – Project Horizon
- Veeam Reporter Free Edition
- RVTools – the “tab heaven” documentation tool for vSphere
Note: the video “Using vMA as a log collector” by David Davis is included in the Train Signal vSphere video training course at www.TrainSignal.com
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My name is Simon Seagrave and I am a London (UK) based Senior Technology Consultant and vSpecialist working for EMC. 
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While I agree with the comments in the podcast about the (un)suitability of the HP MicroServer for a virtualisation lab (probably only useful as a first-time training platform) … I think and hope HP are aiming in a different direction.
Power home users and very small businesses want a micro-configuration and more importantly micro-payments! Just as Eric lamented the cost of 2 x 4GB memory sticks in the video … so an SMB laments the cost of a 2TB enterprise disk: even £55 for a puny 160GB disk is seen as outrageously expensive. I think the combination of ECC and RAID 1 is a good compromise for an SMB. The CPU doesn’t have to be powerful and the low power consumption is … significant.
Hey you large enterprise people … pony up for an HP 110 already … hands off my MicroServer! This baby is part of the SIMPLE IT initiative for companies without IT expertise … you big fish can go play in a bigger pond, please.
In HP’s shoes I’d be looking to support AURORA and even VAIL before ESXi.
If HP offered up a base MicroServer with 4 disk bays all cabled up … and complete with 4 caddies to accept 4 commodity disks … it would sell like hotcakes in the SMB arena. I think it would pull enterprise server sales through, rather than cannibalise them.
I think that project horizon is similar to Citrix Dazzle which is their flavor of an app store that lets you check out published Citrix apps. Similar idea but different since VMware is doing with SaaS apps.
Hi John,
Thanks for the reply and for listening to the vChat episode.
I agree with you that I think we’ll find that HP are well and truely looking torwards the likes of AURORA and perhaps VAIL for a nifty SMB (>10 user) solution. It’ll be interesting to see if they will expand the range, and capabilities, of this MicroServer range to enter into the 10+ user SMB space where the slightly more performant ML1xx range of Proliants are more at home.
If I could ‘tweak’ the current MicroServer offering it’d involve removing the PCI-e x1 slot and in its place adding an extra pair of DIMM sockets allowing for more affordable capacity DIMMs to be used. The CPU for very small environments will no doubt be fine, though I think it could prove to be a little touch and go in some <10 user environments as even in these smaller user setups they often still have the same infrastructure requirements to run particular applications and utilities found in larger IT evironments (eg: AV, email (if not outsourced), database, finance package, bespoke industry specific software packages, etc). Even if only being used by <10 users these applications all take CPU cycles which I feel could take these laptop grade CPUs a little close to the limit in some circumstances. Don't get me wrong I really like the idea of using low power CPUs though as SMBs do tend to bundle all of their infrastructure applications/utils onto a single server I think it may struggle in many SMB situations.
I'm kind of torn on the 4 x drive bays – I like the idea of having 4 bays though it's a shame that they could offer RAID 5 so that SMBs could get a little more bang for their buck out of their drive purchases.
I like the approach that HP is taking here with the MicroServer I just feel that it is perhaps a little too light in these couple of areas.. Just tweak it up a notch and I think they'd be onto a real winner. And also, come on HP… why not throw in a DVD/DVD-R as having to use higher memory capacity DIMMs and having to add disks this starts to become a pricey little box.
Thanks again John for your comment and let me know if/when you get your hands on one of these little servers. I am hoping to take a look at one sometime soon.
All the best,
Simon
Hi Brian,
It certainly is exciting times at the moment with all these great projects/initiatives being worked on. It would be interesting to see what the personal device, application presentation and use model is going to look like in 3-5 years time – should be pretty slick (in theory).
All the best,
Simon
[...] have also covered his blog posting along with HP microserver and cool vSphere iPad apps on their latest vchat episode. If you haven’t watched any of theses vChat’s before I would highly recommend them as the guys [...]
I bought my machine from Servers Plus who were very helpful (indeed recommended), indicating that even the base configuration had all 4 disk bays cabled electrically, data-wise and came with a full complement of 4 plastic trays allowing commodity disks to be added. Given that this is a brand new device they had also checked the optical drive bay: finding it permitted installation of consumer drives, requiring only the Molex-to-power connector normally distributed with a new consumer drive, together with a standard SATA II data cable to be fitted.
I ordered the base server configuration, an extra 1GB RAM (making 2GB) and a power cable … and dug out a consumer Blu-Ray optical drive and SATA cable. The power connection was straighforward; the SATA data cable required a certain dexterity to plug into the motherboard (space of course being at a premium in such a small device) but no more than a few minutes work. However I could not see how to secure the drive with four screws (it looked like there was an HP attachment for the branded drive which allowed the assembly to clip into place). Since I don’t expect to be feeding in many DVDs after the the initial OS load I continued in a somewhat loose but safe state. Care is required when sliding the drive into the chassis: the wires to the front lights displaying machine power, disk activity and network activity are fragile and could easily be damaged if the drive were pushed in too clumsily.
My first set of tests focus on consumer usage, so the goal was to install Windows 7 x64 on the basic hardware configuration (1GB RAM and a single 160GB disk) plus an optical drive. This seemed likely to succeed since the server has been approved for Windows Server 2008 R2, now on a close design path with Windows 7. So it proved, the POST process searched network and hard disk boot locations unsuccessfully … until I pushed the DVD tray in with Windows 7 x64 RTM … after which I soon had the operating system up and running without problems or error messages. Continuing, I installed the Vista x64 driver for a wireless USB adapter (i.e. fine for a home broadband user), brought Windows into line via Microsoft Update and enjoyed a networked ‘server’ at the first attempt. Since then I have connected to the machine using Remote Desktop, completing some basic setups and running a few simple performance tests.
To begin both processors and memory were largely occupied, as is typical for a new Windows installation, but after a while CPU activity settled to virtually zero and memory to 0.49 from 1GB in idle state. I ran Windows Performance Index giving:
Processor 3.9
Memory 3.9
Desktop AERO 2.7
Gaming Graphics 4.5
Disk Transfer 5.9
Note that these are Windows OOB figures: I haven’t installed any chipset, RAID, graphics or wired network drivers … only the wireless driver.
The server has been stable and quiet for over 6 hours now, so I am giving it a solid PASS rating at this point. Thus far I have only a few mechanical problems: how to secure the optical drive (not critical), I’ve taken the front door off but can’t get it back on again! (not critical) … and it looks like I’ll have to at least partially slide the motherboard on its tray some way out to fit the extra 1GB RAM (must do).
I haven’t opened the accompanying documentation CD, having previously downloaded all documents and drivers from HP’s site in advance. All explanations and diagrams thus far have been clear. So thumbs up for the HP MicroServer … and if I can get my thumbs sorted out the few mechanical problems will disappear too.
I am glad I found this site. Great information that I need to know before I take my vmware training bootcamp.
Thanks for all your knowledge. I check back regularly.