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Hi,

Please I need your advice for Eve NG + ESXI + NSX on:
- BARE METAL
- for ONE SINGLE USER
- Purpose is for LAB: ESXi and NSX (will interact with other components such as routers)
- Server will have 128G RAM

I have read UD cookbook 1.8 and the minimum requirements for bare metal are:
- supporting Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT)
- Minimum CPU is any Intel Xeon CPU supporting Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT)

I wonder if the 4860 and 2680 are not too old for my needs and if they will be able to keep up with future releases of Eve. (Note: I missed the purchase of the 2650v2, so I have found these CPU)

Please could you tell me if these "old" CPU 4860v1/2680v1 can run Eve + ESXi + NSX compared to 2670v2 ?

Thank you very much.


2 x Intel Xeon E7-4860 V1 - 10-Core 2.26Ghz (24MB Cache, 6.4 GT/s QPI) => 20C/40T
2 x Intel Xeon E5-2680 V1 - 8-Core 2.70Ghz (20MB Cache, 8.0 GT/s QPI) => 16C/32T
2 x Intel Xeon E5-2670 V2 - 10-Core 2.50Ghz (25MB Cache, 8.0 GT/s QPI) => 20C/40T

=> https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 4583,75275

bear in mind that newest vendor's devices require new CPU..
Therefore recommended will be E5-2650v3 with 128G RAM..
Such I hope will take care about your needs

UD, thanks for your reply.

But forgive my next question: I am a newbie in Eve and VMware

Is Eve supposed to work as an "abstraction" layer for ESXI (and hence NSX) ? If "old" CPU like 4860v1 or 2670v2 can run Eve, and if ESXi can install over Eve bare metal, so should everything work fine for ESXi and NSX, from a FEATURE point of view ? (that's a lot of "if" I know )

Maybe your advice for a 2650v3 was more about PERFORMANCE ?

Regards.

these both are EPT capable, means will run EVE.
E7-4860v1, E5-2680v1
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... l-qpi.html

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... l-qpi.html

If some would ask me what you wold choose. Personally I would go for e5-2680 with SHDD hard drives and install EVE as bare. No Esxi at all.

ESXi is supported on both CPU above.
So eve will work as esxi VM version on any of it

My vision:
Best performance is install bare EVE, and have SHDD hard drives.
Less performance option , Esxi 6.0 or 6.5 (I guess 6.5 is max, because of CPU oldness) and EVE as VM

E5-26XXv3 series is all bout preformance and support of newest nodes, annonced by vendors. Juniper new vSRX, or cisco vXR9K, they require newest CPUs

UD

Hi UD,

My goal is to build a whole environment with routers, firewalls, ESXi. So I will go for Eve on bare metal and other stuff above it (routers, switches, ESXi).

Thanks for your detailed answer, I understand now your advice for an Intel v3.

Have a nice day.