Install vSphere Hypervisor 6.0 on HP P4300 G2

[SP3]

Hello

I have been looking for a test server to run up a heap of VMs on and we got offered a HP P4300 G2. I can only seem to find documents where the storage on this device is shared to other servers and lots of clustering information.

Am I able to install vSphere Hypervisor 6.0 on it or maybe just an older version?

My hope is it will work the same as a standalone DL380 server would with vSphere installed.

Any other suggestions or information would be great too.

Thanks

[Torsten.]

The P4300G2 is based on a DL185G6 and is running LeftHand OS, aka StoreVirtual.

You can run this LeftHand OS even as VSA on a VMWare cluster, but the hardware is not intended  to run anything other than this StoreVirtual OS.

Consider this as a storage device, not as a server.

[oikjn]

The P4300 is a single node used in the creation of a SAN based around the StoreVirtual OS.  It was designed around the idea that you would have multiple P4300 nodes in the SAN to provide redundancy and scalability, but technically a single node will function and serve iSCSI data on its own once you configure it through the CMC program. 

It is technically a server running the StoreVirtual OS and not a VM as stated above.  It was not intended to run anything else on it even though you could technically wipe the data and just use it as a physicaly server and run any OS you wanted on it.  What you really need is a 2nd physical computer you can use as a Hypervisor Host and then you can use this P4300 to hold your data on it.  This of course assumes you could use "shared storage".  If not, its just overly complicated and you could wipe it and use it as a physical server, but its a huge waste of potential... like using a Ferrari as a golf cart.

[Torsten.]

>> It is technically a server running the StoreVirtual OS and not a VM as stated above

Maybe it was not clar, but the meaning was you can run the storevirtual software not only on a physical server, but even as a virtual machine, called VSA - virtual storage appliance.

[SP3]

Thanks for the info.

So what I understand is the P4300 may run a hypervisor but has a high chance of not being able to run anything else other then Lefthand.

If I want to use this it really should be paired with a 2nd physical box. 

I only have the oppertunity to by 1 item so this may not be what I am after. Never having used something like this before it does seem like a great bit of hardware to learn a few things from while setting up a test network.

[Torsten.]

No, it should not run any virtualization software. Not sure what the box has, but maybe a dual core cpu and 4gb memory ... it is a proliant server, but intnded to run the lefthand aka storevirtual os.

[SP3]

Hi Torsten

I am told this one has 32GB memory.

If it can't run the hypervisor then it will be pointless for me to get.

At this point I think my only/best option is to get a normal prolient server to run as the hypervisor host.

Thanks again for the reply.

[Torsten.]

Just to clarify ... the Lefthand / Storevirtual is a solution consisting of a combination of server hardware and special OS. This makes this server to a storage device. Of course you can re-purpose the hardware as a "normal" server, but since this is an older  server at entry level it has probably not so much performance ...