Subj : Re: Choice of hypervisors
To   : vorlon
From : claw
Date : Mon Jul 04 2022 15:32:53

On 04 Jul 2022, vorlon said the following...
 vo> Hi Deon,
 vo> 
 vo>  > I must say I've been pretty lucky to get ESXi on a lot of things (that
 vo>  > werent on the HCL). There is a german site (escapes me at the moment)
 vo>  > that has a lot of "community" drivers that has been quite useful. With
 vo>  > that site, I have it running on an APU1D (which runs my BBS, Hub 3, my
 vo>  > netware server, an MSDOS 622 and my Windows game server) - which only
 vo>  > has a serial port for a console :)
 vo> 
 vo> Yes ESXi will run on more hardware than what's on the HCL, if you want to
 vo> "hack" around with it. I had to use a third party network driver for the
 vo> second port on my current home server. (Intel S1200BTL, with a Xeon
 vo> E31240 @3.3Ghz) I'd still be using my old/previous home server (Now
 vo> that it's only me) running a Q9600 cpu, if it wasn't for the dropping of
 vo> the cpu support and the limit of 8gb of ram....
 vo> 
 vo> Vmware go out of there way to remove still valid and usable cpu's etc.
 vo> But then they are aming the product at the comercial $$$ paying people.
 vo> It's just lucky for the comminity that they have a free/trial version of
 vo> the product.
 vo> 
 vo>  > That said, I was interseted to see the discussion on xcp-ng and
 vo>  > proxmox. ESXi takes up too much of the 4G and I'm wondering if I can
 vo>  > replace it with one of those to get a little bit more ram.
 vo> 
 vo> I have installed proxmox on the above older server (The Q9600), and it
 vo> used just shy of 1gb of ram.. I think it was around the 900mb area.
 vo> 
 vo> Unlike ESXi though, proxmox want's to use part of the HD for the debian
 vo> based install. The other thing I'm yet to try out and why my S1299BTL is
 vo> still on ESXi (6.5 now), is the hardware passthrough for the sata hd
 vo> controller. It's got 4 2gb hd's passed through to Nas4free, with ZFS on
 vo> the drives.
 vo> 
 vo> 
 vo> \/orlon

I've been reading a bit of these for a while know and am wondering what it is you can't run.  I have used ESXi for a long time and most of the time If I can do an upgrade it doesn't lose support of any of the hardware.  I think I'm currently on 6.7.  I'm not at home but pretty sure thats what it is.  Not interest in 7 yet as there isn't anything I can't run that I want too as of now.  

The majority of my servers are on Linux, with only a few exceptions for game servers that really need to be in windows.  

I have a Dell R815.  Its old but its kicking along.  Been able to do anything I throw at it.

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