I’ve recently got to setup up a Shuttle XH61V for a friend. I’ve read a few posts about how they make good VMware ESXi hosts for those power conscious folk running home labs. I figured this would be a good time to see just how power hungry, or not, one of these boxes is and how well ESXi runs.
The box would end up with an Intel i3-2120 processor, 16GB RAM (2 * Crucial CT102464BF1339) and 126GB Crucial mSATA SSD (CT128M4SSD3). Quite a beefy XBMC media centre PC build from a selection of new bits and pre-owned bits! Anyhoo, while putting the components together I took some power readings along the way:
Description | Power (VA) | Power (W) |
---|---|---|
Power supply alone, i.e. without computer attached | 20VA | 2W |
Power supply with bare case off | 20VA | 2W |
Power supply with bare case on (turned on but obviously doing nothing) | 24VA | 3W |
PSU + case + 2*8GB DIMMs (turned on but obviously doing nothing) | 24VA | 3W |
PSU + case + CPU + 2*8GB DIMMs (idling at BIOS) | 46VA | 37W |
PSU + case + CPU + 2*8GB DIMMs + SSD (idling at BIOS) | 46VA | 37W |
PSU + case + CPU + 2*8GB DIMMs + SSD (switched off) | 24VA | 3W |
Installing ESXi | 32VA – 46VA | |
ESXi with no VMs (High Performance power option) | 40VA | |
ESXi with no VMs (Balanced power option) | 32VA | 21W |
ESXi with no VMs (Low power option) | 32VA | 21W |
ESXi with three busy VMs (Balanced power option) | 64VA | |
Windows 7 x64 SP1 idle (balanced, low, high power options) | 32VA | 21W |
Windows 7 x64 SP1 put into sleep mode | 28VA | 3W |
So, not too shabby when it idles. I will be interested in seeing what power a 22nm 3rd or 4th generation processor would consume while idling. It seems that this i3-2120 CPU idles at approximately 18W. During a heavy work load, the processor seems to consume approximately 21W extra for a total of roughly 40W – not quite the 65W TDP max Intel quote.
I installed it with the standard ESXi 5.1U1 installation media. No issues, once I found a suitable USB drive to USB boot from! Both onboard NICs were seen and the mSATA SSD was recognised too.
Note: It seems the included Realtek 8186 has reliability issues under VMware ESXi 5.1. The odd thing is that when I first installed ESXi 5.1 it worked fine and I was able to use to successfully. However, once I rebooted a couple of times, the NIC does not really work. It manages to get a DHCP IP address and is pingable for about 30 seconds before it drops off the network. No log entries on the host or the switch indicate the cause. Very curious!