How Would You Build A Workstation/Server For $2000?

[BfA]

So I've decided that rather than build a rackable unit and co-lo it, I'm going to build a workstation / server for my business' evaluation period. Since it's not mission critical, up time doesn't have to be 100% but I'd like to keep it as close to as possible.

Scenario:
This box will have to be powerful enough to run 4-6 instances of Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 as well as at least 2 instances of Windows 7 x64. The server instances will be used for services mainly (Team Foundation Server 2010, Sharepoint 2010, Project Server 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, etc). I'll also be creating an internal domain for all of these and running my own DHCP, DNS servers etc also for learning purposes.

The main purpose of this test network will be to create an internal development environment for a web app that will be published using Microsoft Azure. All the development and testing will be done using the various services on the network. One of the workstations will have Visual Studio 2010 installed as well as any other programming software. The second workstation will be used as my personal PC and will be mainly used for web browsing, e-mail and video. It will also be used for some light gaming, but nothing heavy.

Now I have to decide what hardware would be cable of running this. Keep in mind that most of it will have light usage during 90% of the time. I'd also like to keep most VM's running as much as possible to avoid any issues with the network going down. Essentially, I'd like to create my own network for this project but also use it as an opportunity to create everything from scratch and see what it takes to keep it running.

What I'm looking at initially:

Processor: Core i7 920 + super quiet fan/heatsink
RAM: 12 GB Triple Channeled RAM (Is this enough?) (No idea what kind, suggestions?)
Storage: 4x1TB WD Caviar Black HDD in RAID 1+0 *OR* 2 60-80gb SSD drives in Raid 0 (Would love Intel x-25 but looks too expensive?)
Optical: Existing Samsung DVD burner
Video Card: ATi 5770 (Currently have 2 monitors would be interested in adding a 3rd possibly)

Motherboard:
- no idea here
- are most on-board audio options any good? I'll just have a 2 speaker setup for the foreseeable future

Case:
- no idea as it depends on if I get ATX or EATX
- do I need two power supplies?

Questions:
- is the 920 able to handle the workload I'm looking at or should I get 2x5520 or is that overkill in this situation since most of the vm's won't be actively in use that much?

- what motherboard would be good in this situation? is the quality of the onboard RAID solutions good these days? Is it easy to replace the onboard RAID if it fails?

- is Hyper-V a better option than VMWare since I'll be using MS software mainly? Which version of VMWare would be appropriate for this project? (Fairly new to the virtualized world so would like to take this as a learning opportunity as well).

Preferences:
- as quiet as possible as it will be right next to my bed
- wouldn't mind if the mobo had a firewire port if possible

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking of, would like to hear what other people think and see what holes they can poke in my idea so far. Would love to spend 1500 but dont' think that'd be possible for this. Thanks for any help!

*************************

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Running 4-6 Server vm's and 2 workstation vm's. Servers will be runinng services and maintaining a small Windows domain. Essentially my own internal build network for a Windows Azure web app. Main workstation image will be used for (in descending order: web surfing, video watching, e-mail, slight gaming

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
~$2000

3) Where do you live?
Vancouver, Canada

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
Cpu + fan/heatsink, RAM, HDD, Mobo, RAID card if it doesn't come with motherboard, video card, case, powersupply

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Just a DVD burner, monitors, speakers (2), keyboard, mouse

6) Will you be overclocking?
NO

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
1x22" + 1x19"

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
End of December to middle of January

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
Would like RAID and firewire, but am concerned wether the onboard RAID is high enough quality to support the hdd setup I require for this to work correctly. Sound would be a bonus since I only am planning on using two speakers for this.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
Will be utilizing Trial software 180 licenses for the most part. If the trial is successful I will be registering for the Microsoft BizSpark program.

 

[lt_shiro]

Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail and Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W Continuous Power ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail Combo $95

EVGA 141-BL-E757-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX X58 SLI LE Intel Motherboard - Retail $240

Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - Retail $289

3x G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL - Retail $282

2x OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30GXXX 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail $260

4x SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $340

2x OCZ OCZACSSDBRKT2 Solid State Drive 3.5" Adaptor Bracket 2 - Retail $18

Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Network Adapter - Retail $31

COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus Intel Core i5 & Intel Core i7 compatible RR-B10-212P-G1 120mm "heatpipe direct contact" Long ... - Retail $29

SAMSUNG 8X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 6X DVD+R DL 8X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 5X DVD-RAM 8X DVD-ROM 24X CD-R 4X CD-RW 24X CD-ROM 2MB Cache USB 2.0 Black Slim External DVD Writer Model SE-S084 - Retail $50

Total before S&H $1634

I will explain when I get work.

edit
I will re-do the suggestions has I now notice you live in canada.

 

[BfA]

Thanks, I'm interested in hearing on why you chose those parts. A few questions:

1) Is there no 4GB ram sticks these days or are they very expensive? Just that would allow for less parts if I used 3x4GB.

2) Would using any 5770 work fine? I was just going to look for the best one, but not sure if I should use a specific one for the motherboard.

3) I see both SSD's and HDD's which is what I was looking at initially, but was wondering how this would be setup with the VM's since I'm not 100% familiar with how they work.

4) I'd like to install a quieter fan on the linked Heatsink for the CPU. Any suggestions? (Normally I wouldn't care that much but this will be 1-3 feet from my bead so quiet is good )

 

[Dangman]

1) 4Gb sticks are very expensive.
2) Any HD 5770 would work.
3) SSDs for the OS/heavily used apps, the hard drives for storage/apps. Store the VMs on the hard drives
4) Yate Loons, Nexus are two quiet fans companies.

 

[Einsteinjr]

I work at Microsoft in a lab where we run many (1500+) VMs as test machines for testing Windows 7 (I work for the group who releases the Win7/R2 patches/Service Packs) and I can tell you from experience the number one bottleneck I see when running VMs is disk I/O performance. At the very least, you want to have a hard drive for every VM that you are running.

Because of Msft's large budgets, I get the luxury of ordering 10k RPM SAS drives, but that would (obviously) be out of your price range.

 

[BfA]

1) Are 10k SAS drives faster than SSD?

2) So would this setup be better? 4x60gb SSD in RAID 1+0 then 2x1.5gb hdd in Raid 1 for data? Would 120gb be enough space to run 4-6 server vm's??

3) Not sure if I'm understanding correctly how this works. When installing the general VM would it run as a base and the I add server/workstation vm's as needed or would I install say Win 2k8 and then run the additional vm's on top of that? It would seem to me to be better to run them all after installing a base os? Trying to figure this out <n00b>

 

[Einsteinjr]

1.) Don't know a whole lot about SSD drives. I do know that their life-span is not as long as SAS drives. Personally, becase you're on a budget, I'd get one SSD drive for the host (the one where you'd do your gaming) and install Win2k8 and basic SATA drives for the rest. I'm pretty sure that's what lt_shiro is suggesting.

2.) It depends on what exactly you're going to be storing in the VMs. Are they going to be basic OS installs with little else? I would at least reserve 40GB per VM. How many "snapshots" do you think you'll need per VM? "Snapshots" are effectively an image (.VHD in Hyper-V's case) of your VM. So once you take a snapshot, you are effectively doubling the size of HD space you are using.

3.) Your assumption is correct. You install a base OS (the Host), install your VM software of choice, and then start creating your VMs on the host.

PS. Is dual boot an option for you?

 

[Dangman]

1) In general, not really.
2) Whether or not 120GB would be enough depends on what exactly those Server VMs will be doing, how much traffic they're getting each, etc.
3) You need to first install an OS, like Win 2K8, and then install your choice of VM app (VMWare most likely). Then install your VMs through that VM app that's now running in Win 2K8

 

[Phimp]

2) So would this setup be better? 4x60gb SSD in RAID 1+0 then 2x1.5gb hdd in Raid 1 for data? Would 120gb be enough space to run 4-6 server vm's??

One thing I often recommend is to go for just Raid-0 with 2 or more SSD's.
Two extra SSD's just so you can run raid 0+1 is costly and pointless.
Once you have it all setup and running with your OS setup and fine-tuned, use a program like Acronis TrueImage to create an image backup of the entire array (in this case only 120GB) and store it on a separate disk (in this case, a larger hard drive also in the system). Then set up Acronis to run daily to update this backup image.
You save the cost of 2 more SSD's, still have a backup in case something dies, and can use the money you saved towards something else, or 4 SSD's in Raid-0! =D

 

[Yonzie]

I'd either go RAID0 with a bunch of SSDs or get a drive (say 200GB) for each VM except DNS and similar no-power stuff.

2) Would using any 5770 work fine? I was just going to look for the best one, but not sure if I should use a specific one for the motherboard.

If you're going with the X58 board you can easily fit dual graphics cards. No reason to pay $170 (US) when you can get two (with dual-DVI) for <$100. Also, you'd most likely have to get a DP>DVI converter, making the savings even more substantial.

1) Are 10k SAS drives faster than SSD?

No. (nearly always)

 

[BfA]

PS. Is dual boot an option for you?

Yes, multiboot is an option, but I'd like to have all of the VM's running at the same time as I'm also using this as a learning opportunity to setup my own domain/network and dev environment from scratch.

2) Whether or not 120GB would be enough depends on what exactly those Server VMs will be doing, how much traffic they're getting each, etc.

The Server VM's will doing not much more than their basic install and various services installed on each one. Since this will be a one man development there wont' be that much more noticeable activity disk space / processor / traffic wise on the servers than the default install since I can only create so much.

One thing I often recommend is to go for just Raid-0 with 2 or more SSD's.
Two extra SSD's just so you can run raid 0+1 is costly and pointless.

I'd either go RAID0 with a bunch of SSDs or get a drive (say 200GB) for each VM except DNS and similar no-power stuff.

So with these suggestions would getting say 2x128gb ssd's in RAID 0 work then? If I can keep the server instances low, say 4 servers and 1 workstation, that should fit in the 256(-formatting) space if I say each will be an average of about 40gb or would that be too tight?

I guess that the SSD's are so expensive that my choice is either 4 caviar black 1TB in Raid 0 (are these still the fastest?) or else 2 smaller 32, 64 or 128 SSD's? (128's are looking pretty expensive though)

If you're going with the X58 board you can easily fit dual graphics cards. No reason to pay $170 (US) when you can get two (with dual-DVI) for <$100. Also, you'd most likely have to get a DP>DVI converter, making the savings even more substantial.

So what would be a suggest then something like the Radeon 4670? Or is there a better deal out there? Also, would 1 new 5570 card in an x16 slot be faster/quieter than 2 cards in x8 slots in SLI/XFire?

More Questions:

1) Is 520W enough for what I'm talking about? I noticed that power supply he listed is very highly thought of but they also have a 620W out, should I get that just in case I upgrade?

2) Is the RAID on that motherboard decent or should I be looking at getting a PCI Raid card as well?

3) How come he added the extra PCI Network card? Are the onboard solutions on the motherboard slow?

 

[Dangman]

So with these suggestions would getting say 2x128gb ssd's in RAID 0 work then? If I can keep the server instances low, say 4 servers and 1 workstation, that should fit in the 256(-formatting) space if I say each will be an average of about 40gb or would that be too tight?

I guess that the SSD's are so expensive that my choice is either 4 caviar black 1TB in Raid 0 (are these still the fastest?) or else 2 smaller 32, 64 or 128 SSD's? (128's are looking pretty expensive though)

The WD 1TB Blacks are still some of the fastest 1TB drives out there. But even in RAID 0, they're still slower than many high-end SSDs. My personal recommendation is keep a few of the VMs off the SSDs as you never know when you need the extra space.

So what would be a suggest then something like the Radeon 4670? Or is there a better deal out there? Also, would 1 new 5570 card in an x16 slot be faster/quieter than 2 cards in x8 slots in SLI/XFire?

SLI/CF is generally oriented towards high performance at any cost type of situations. It is not cost-effective nor justified with two low end cards (the HD 4670 or HD 5750).

More Questions:

1) Is 520W enough for what I'm talking about? I noticed that power supply he listed is very highly thought of but they also have a 620W out, should I get that just in case I upgrade?

2) Is the RAID on that motherboard decent or should I be looking at getting a PCI Raid card as well?

3) How come he added the extra PCI Network card? Are the onboard solutions on the motherboard slow?

1) It should be enough assuming you don't go crazy on the video card choices.

2) For the RAID 1 +0 or RAID 1 or RAID 0, onboard RAID should be enough.

3) The onboard LAN of most mobos would be fast enough for the average user/gamer. But for those who need as much network/LAN transfer speeds as possible or planning on running multiple server instances like you're doing, an Intel NIC is the far better choice.

 

[BfA]

The WD 1TB Blacks are still some of the fastest 1TB drives out there. But even in RAID 0, they're still slower than many high-end SSDs. My personal recommendation is keep a few of the VMs off the SSDs as you never know when you need the extra space.

Ya, I guess I'll have to figure out what I want running and maybe have less servers with more services running on each one to allow it to fit on SSDs. I'll post in the VM forum and see if people have some suggestions once I have a list of all the services I want running.

3) The onboard LAN of most mobos would be fast enough for the average user/gamer. But for those who need as much network/LAN transfer speeds as possible or planning on running multiple server instances like you're doing, an Intel NIC is the far better choice.

I can understand it gives more speed but if I'm running the instances in VM's I'm not quite sure how this will help? Unless it's as a 3rd NIC to a router/switch if I set one up.

 

[Dangman]

I can understand it gives more speed but if I'm running the instances in VM's I'm not quite sure how this will help? Unless it's as a 3rd NIC to a router/switch if I set one up.

How are those VMs going to access the internet? Even with a handful of those VMs accessing the net, it might bog down a bit with the onboard NIC. The Intel NIC alleviates any potential bottleneck and the like.

 

[Yonzie]

So what would be a suggest then something like the Radeon 4670? Or is there a better deal out there? Also, would 1 new 5570 card in an x16 slot be faster/quieter than 2 cards in x8 slots in SLI/XFire?

Just get the cheapest graphics card you can find with Dual-DVI. Then, if needed, add a second one down the road. You will not be running SLI or Crossfire, this is just a straight-up two-graphics card setup to get more screen real estate.

 

[criccio]

I vote for just the 5770 and be done with it.

 

[BfA]

I vote for just the 5770 and be done with it.

Ya that's what I'm planning on. Not sure if I'll have the extra $200 for a third monitor as I already have two which should work for now.

 

[BfA]

Thanks for the info guys, if you have any other ideas, please let me know.

I'm not 100% set on what I'm going to do for the storage situation so I placed a new topic in that sub-forum. I'm pretty sure the first option I listed is out cause it's insane $$$. You can check it out here:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1479473

 

[mobilecommand]

Hello,

I know I am coming to the party a little late but let me give you my perspective since i work with virtualized stuff all day long and run my own virtualized lab at home.

You stated you want to use this as a pc as well as hosting vm's. To use this pc as a workstation you only really have 2 options windows server running hyper-v or windows xp/vista/7 running virtual pc or vm workstation/player.


if you go the workstation route you are going to have fairly poor performance imho due to the fact you have an os, a virtualization product that is not super optimized and so on and so forth sure it gets the job done but been there done that and not really into anymore these days.

now you could go with windows 2008 with hyper - v which will give you a server os, will give your Vm's better resources and performance since its a true hypervisor and sure you will get 90 percent there but you may be lacking in the whole multimedia department such as running games and will likely run into compatibility issues as windows 2008 is a server os not a client os.

You could run ESX or Xen server but when you look at login pages you don’t get a client os as it’s a true server hypervisor " both pieces of software run some form of a linux micro kernel.

Now ESXI/Xen would be the optimal way to go but now you lose the workstation ability.

so here is what I purpose.

allocate 500 - 800 bucks and get a dedicated client pc and use the rest of the money to build a dedicated server.

I know you are talking about SSD drives etc but this is a test lab save the money and get a few 1tb black drives use internal raid controller. Depending on how you do this your vm's are portable so all you need to do is export/backup your vm take it to your new server re=import and done.. Does not matter what hardware you are running..

Sure it’s not your optimal goal but if you are going to roll this into production with this you should really buy appropriate hardware like a dell or hp server, dual power supplies, hotswap sas drives and xeon Nehalem processors etc.

as far as your server os for a true hypervisor you options are hyper-v from Microsoft, Xenserver from Citrix and ESXI from Vmware.

They all have their pros and cons but i personally recommend Xenserver from Citrix for a few reason.

1) its free.. Yup totally free.
2) para virtualization - basically the Vm's talk directly to the hardware at some level so you get more performance then other Hypervisors. "This is usually a debate topic"
3) full interoperability with Hyper-v to you can export from xenserver to Hyper-v and hyper-v to xenserver with no issues where as going to or from Esx you have to convert the Vm's and its a little dicey at times. Also esx to esx works well
4) You will have an easier learning curve to getting into the Virtualiztion world with xen then esx imho.
5) oh yea did i mention its free..

Don’t get me wrong ESX/ESXI is very good but i personally feel it’s a higher learning curve
Esx has been around longer, a little more polished then Xen and you get a higher consolidation ratio of vm's due to the full virtualization layer but you typically get slower performance. While ESXi gives you a pretty good taste of vmware you would likely need the full product and that’s a large price tag. Xenserver is free and you can go production with the free product.. If you where to buy xen essentials "a lic key" it enables more reporting as well HA Type functionality for the most part and that key is around 3k retail..

Hyper v is getting there but i personally don’t think it’s up to par with Xen or ESX yet.

At work we run both esx and xen and while most of the Vm's run on esx.. vm's that require high performance go on Xenserver.

Each Hypervisor has its place and at the end of the day you need to figure out whats best for you and if you have a dedicated server do a bake off and see what you like the best.. End of the day you need to support it when something goes wrong.

In my home lab i am running and amd black x4 chip with 8 gig of memory with a single black 1tb drive and i can run roughly 12 vm's with no real issues.. The only time I have any slowdowns is when i have a few vm's starting up and that's because of the single sata disk.. Once they are up and running they do move fairly quickly with no slowdowns.

The i7 is a nice chip and i don’t think it’s a bad move.. i went cheap with the AMD black x 4 as it's just a workhorse and reality is it was cheap. it’s in a lab so I can try to things out at home and get certifications. Do I regret it nope.. And I would do it again since I was able to build it for around 600 bucks. Sure I would of loved to get a quad core Nehalem in the lab but you can easily get into the 2000+ range really quickly esp when you talk about raid, mb's, memory etc.

If I were in your shoes as far as storage goes would just buy 1 drive and try it.. If you feel you need more performance, export the vm's, pull the drive out and put it in your client computer or a ext drive cage then spend the money on more/different disks and or a raid card, reinstall and import the vm's. If you go with the esx/xen hypervisor your average os install time is 10 - 12 minutes and the time of backing up re-importing the vm's. U could go with SSD disks I am just not a fan esp in a lab environment. Seems like overkill to me and the disk to cost ratio is expensive plus, in a vm environment you have lots of rights so you are likely to burn the sectors out faster.. I think you can get fairly close in terms of iops with a raid 10 array vs SSD disks.

If you have any questions let me know.. I Just wanted to let you know there are a few options out there you should fully explore all of them before you make your purchase. Also if i am all over the place I apologize as I am writing this though out the day as I have time.

 

[BfA]

Hello,

I know I am coming to the party a little late but let me give you my perspective since i work with virtualized stuff all day long and run my own virtualized lab at home.

.....

Thanks for the info, I find it really valuable to hear your experience. After hearing it I'm thinking that I might rethink how I'm setting this up. Your point of a cheap setup really makes sense since this will be a lab setup. I am willing to spend more money if it works out but I should try not to get too far ahead of myself.

Right now I have a Core 2 Duo 4550 system with 4gb of ram. Do you think if I put in a configuration of 4x500gb RAID 10 setup and another 4gb of ram that would be powerful enough to run 5 VM's with Xenserver? I'm not sure how much processor each VM needs under Xenserver, but the servers won't be used for anything processor intensive once running.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts!

 

[BfA]

if you go the workstation route you are going to have fairly poor performance imho due to the fact you have an os, a virtualization product that is not super optimized and so on and so forth sure it gets the job done but been there done that and not really into anymore these days.

Also, I'm not too familiar with VM's so if you could give me a bit more info on the way I was thinking of having it work...

I was going to have the VM Server software running as I understand it, I was thinking it can be run without actually having an OS installed and I can just install the vm server 'base' then I could run the 5 server OS' and the Windows 7 VM. From there I would spend most of my time in the Windows 7 VM but the other Server 2008 VM's would be running in the background and I could use RDP to remotely admin the servers. I could also install games etc into the Windows 7 VM and play them from there?

Does that make sense? Could that work? I'd just rather have one box running everything if possible rather than having two boxes...

 

[Dangman]

AFAIK, gaming in a VM does not work well at all. Despite all of the advances of virtualization tech/software, it has not improved to the point where you can play a 3d game installed on a VM.

Also, you still need an OS to install VMServer on.