Disk for virtual machine host

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jseko

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Jul 29, 2010
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I will be using my old computer for a virtual machine host but I am unsure of what disk setup I need to make it work well.

I am thinking of uisng Windows Server 2008R2 with HyperV or possibly VirtualBox.

I am going for MS certifications so mainly I am trying to simulate enterprise environment with DC, DHCP, DNS, some sort of DFS, possibly SCCM, etc

System setup as follows:
Intel E8400
Asus P965 board
8GB RAM, max supported by 965 chipset
Geforce 210, 512MB -- even IGP would work, but I bought this for $10 for its low TDP. Cost less than a new motherboard

Do I need RAID, or does one drive like WD Caviar black or Samsung F1 suffice? Or maybe WD Velociraptor?
 
Setup an ESXi server and run all your OSs as VMs. I was using Hyper-V and then switched and like it much better.
 
What disk arrangement are you using?

Are you using the free VMware ESXi? Only reason I decided on HyperV for Win 2008 is because I get those free.
 
jseko said:
What disk arrangement are you using?

Are you using the free VMware ESXi? Only reason I decided on HyperV for Win 2008 is because I get those free.
Click to expand...

Yes I am using the free VMware ESXi. No special disk arrangement since you would need a support RAID card to use ESXi. Plus, it is really just for testing and snapshots are easy to do if you want I backup.

My 2008 server is setup with an overclocked i7-920 quad core at 3.6GHz, six 1TB drives setup in two separate volumes of RAID5 with 12GB of RAM at 1600GHz. Just running 2008 with Exchange, SQL, DHCP, etc, was easily using up 6GB of RAM. Hyper-V doesn't allocate RAM anywhere near as good as ESXi. So although you won't have the RAID configuration, it still performs great. It is quick and easy to setup. So you might as well try it out.
 
I stuck a 1TB Samsung F3 in there along with ESXi on a USB flash drive...I guess I'll see how this goes.
 
I originally installed ESXi on a USB drive, but for some strange reason my server was ocassionally having trouble booting off the USB drive. I ended up switching to a 160GB laptop drive that I had lying around. I also use the drive to store ISO files of my OS's to install them easily without wasting space on my drives dedicated for the VMs.

Your weekest point is probably the CPU. A quad core would be a bit nicer, especially with Server 2008.
 
So far I'm liking my ESXi but I've also only built a DC.

It is missing a lot of features though like convert VM to template and clone VM, etc... Guess those are features of the pay version I use at work. They have 5 ESX hosts with 15 dual core CPUs. Three quad socket servers, two dual socket, one of those with only one proc because it was less expensive to buy another server than to buy more Oracle which is licensed based on the number of procs on the physical host.
 
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