greengolftee87
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2008
- Messages
- 274
First off let me lay out what I'm considering and you can tell me if its a reasonable plan.
Currently I have:
Desktop
- i7 930
- 12GB ram
Server
- 2008R2
- 8+ hdd
- Athlon II X4 3.0Ghz
- 4GB Ram
- Hyper-V with a few VMs
I'm thinking of basically switching my desktop with the server. I am running out of ram on the server and its DDR2 and all the slots are full so i'd have to start replacing instead of adding. For the server OS i was looking at esxi 5.0. Does vmware offer a free version of this? I am running the free version of esxi 3.5 at my parents house so Im familiar with managing it.
A major concern for me using esxi is I use server 08R2 to serve up files and handle vpn. If I were to run esxi off a usb key and add in a 2 port card for local storage could I pass through all the other motherboard ports to a 08R2 VM? How about usb controllers? My UPS us usb and I use a network shutdown utility on the 08R2 vm as well.
If the passthrough is possible, how are the speeds? If I give R2 a dedicated NIC can I expect the same transfer rates as bare metal?
I hope I've given enough info here. Thanks
Currently I have:
Desktop
- i7 930
- 12GB ram
Server
- 2008R2
- 8+ hdd
- Athlon II X4 3.0Ghz
- 4GB Ram
- Hyper-V with a few VMs
I'm thinking of basically switching my desktop with the server. I am running out of ram on the server and its DDR2 and all the slots are full so i'd have to start replacing instead of adding. For the server OS i was looking at esxi 5.0. Does vmware offer a free version of this? I am running the free version of esxi 3.5 at my parents house so Im familiar with managing it.
A major concern for me using esxi is I use server 08R2 to serve up files and handle vpn. If I were to run esxi off a usb key and add in a 2 port card for local storage could I pass through all the other motherboard ports to a 08R2 VM? How about usb controllers? My UPS us usb and I use a network shutdown utility on the 08R2 vm as well.
If the passthrough is possible, how are the speeds? If I give R2 a dedicated NIC can I expect the same transfer rates as bare metal?
I hope I've given enough info here. Thanks