HP are running a special cashback offer during September on the G1610T 4GB Generation 8 Microserver.

 

Does not come with any storage or operating system.

http://www.ebuyer.com/722189-hp-proliant-gen8-g1610t-4gb-ram-microserver-819185-421

 

I've just ordered one, price after cashback is £114, which to me seems a bargain.

 

Crucial UK have the 8GB memory in stock, at decent prices (£58 for 8GB DDR ECC) so no need to buy the official RAM. I'll most likely be ordering that to upgrade it to 12GB RAM.

So tempting, just bought a 2TB WD MyCloud though so no new toys for a bit!

Server was delivered yesterday, its a substantial piece of kit. Just waiting on the memory which is out for delivery this morning before setting up ESXi 6, and migrating my VMs across to the new box.

 

I've already added 7TB of internal storage, and with 12GB of RAM for now it should perform well.

 

I am guessing the cheapness is because a Gen 9 box maybe on the way.

Well, I've now added the 8GB UDIMM and have 12GB of installed RAM. ESXi is all installed and configured using the 7TB of storage, now restoring the 4 VMs onto the host from backup.

 

I went for Kingston RAM over Crucial in the end because it was cheaper, and got next day delivery on it from Amazon.

What backup/restore software are you using for VMware?

 

My N36l has been relegated to running freenas after I got a Lenovo TS140 for my ESX host - (just over £200 after cashback and has a quad core Xeon and can take 32gb RAM)

I was considering folding all the microserver HW into the lenovo and virtualizing freenas using VT-d passthrough, but given the cost of a compatible pci-e raid card, im in no rush.

For restore, I just created a new VM with exactly the same config as the original and currently restoring the bare metal backups. On the last one now, 500GB down and 200 to go. Very simple as long as the server is 2012 R2, attach XHCI USB controller to VM and map the USB 3 port through to the newly created VM. Without XCHI it would never work as ESXi defaults to USB1 speeds, even for USB 2.0 ports.

 

For the small VMs, I used VMWare fusion on my Mac to download the VM from the old server, then uploaded it to the new one. Fusion can manage at a basic level ESXi hosts and when uploaded it configure ESXi correctly for the newly added VM.

 

At work we use Veeam Enterprise, I'll have a play with the free version whilst ESXi is in eval mode. Once you enter the free ESXi key you loose all the licensed features that Veeam needs to work (even the free Veeam).