Hyper-V Rig

[grdoorguy]

Hello,

I am looking to build a new rig to do some light virtualization and storage. I would like to experiment with Hyper-V as I already have experience working with VMWare. The box will run one guest OS full time "WHS probably". The rest of the guest OS'es will just be used for school and usually don't exceed a Windows Server OS and two max of three Windows XP workstations. I currently run VMWare on my desktop for this and I would like to get it setup in a more stable environment for next semester. I would like to keep this on a moderate budget "aka cheap". I am just fishing for some ideas from the pros in addition to my own research.

Thanks
Grdoorguy

 

[DeChache]

My Hyper-V box is a E8400 with 8 Gigs of ram.

Really the only thing you really need for Hyper-V is hardware VT support. Its not near as fussy as ESXi

 

[grdoorguy]

That doesn't look like a bad processor. On the egg it looks like the processor is around $170, 8gb of ram ($180) and any of an assortment of $80-$150 mobos. I was looking at an i5 750 ($195) 8gb DDR3 (219.00) on an ASUS P7F-X (175.00) which seems like a decent amount of extra power for only around $100. Either way I'm looking at between $500 and $600 dollars which isn't bad I'm just stuck now contemplating building a el-cheapo dual atom WHS and putting all the shiny new hardware in my desktop and sticking with VMware.

 

[DeChache]

That doesn't look like a bad processor. On the egg it looks like the processor is around $170, 8gb of ram ($180) and any of an assortment of $80-$150 mobos. I was looking at an i5 750 ($195) 8gb DDR3 (219.00) on an ASUS P7F-X (175.00) which seems like a decent amount of extra power for only around $100. Either way I'm looking at between $500 and $600 dollars which isn't bad I'm just stuck now contemplating building a el-cheapo dual atom WHS and putting all the shiny new hardware in my desktop and sticking with VMware.

If your going to buy new go with your build. My build was built with spare parts.

 

[Kettchxxii]

Yeah, you could piece togeather a dual socket quad opteron system for less than that if you shop around...

Heres what I payed for mine:

MSI Speedster K8ND ($110, from a Forum Member)
2x 8347 Opterons (1.9 Ghz) ($30 each, ebay)
8 GB DDR2 ECC ($100 total, ebay)

Fill the remaining slots with intel nics and away you go...

 

[grdoorguy]

I ended going with a new desktop and recycled old parts plus the old desktop into my Hyper-V rig. Thanks for the advice.

Desktop:
Core i7 920
Thermalright Cogage "I hate this thing"
EVGA X58
XFX GTS 250
Gskill DDR3 1600 8gb
WD 320GB HD
OCZ Mod-Stream 500w
Coolermaster 690 Adv
Windows 7 Pro

Server:
Phenom II x4 940
Asus M4N72
Gskill DDR2 800 8gb
MSI Video
MSI 600w PSU
Ultra M998
3x WD 160GB 7200 RPM "Virtual Machines"
2x WD 1TB 7200 RPM "Storage"
1x Seagate 160gb 7200 RPM "OS"
Host: Windows Server 2008 R2
Guest: Windows Home Server

 

[J-Will]

Thats comparable to my server, though I'm still trying to get more media storage drives in there with a RAID controller.
Host: Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V
Guests:
Server 2008 - IIS, SQL
Win 7 x64
*Turnkey Linux - LAMP
*Ubuntu Server
*Fedora Core 12

*Just to play with, still trying to learn Linux. I'd really like to use the LAMP server as a website dev server, but my limited Linux knowledge if preventing me from actually using this VM.

The only problem with Linux on Hyper-V is that integration services are difficult to install. In fact I have not been able to install them successfully as of yet on either my Fedora or Ubuntu VMs. This only poses an issue when you Remote into the Hyper-V server, and try to bring up a Linux VM from the Hyper-V manager.

 

[grdoorguy]

I had wondered if the Microsoft aspect of Hyper-V would be problematic with a Linux guest. Ive noticed a similar problem with getting the integration service "or whatever the other respective VM software calls them" installed on Linux in Vmware-Workstation in the past also so this may just be a universal pain not a Microsoft specific one.

 

[Dan_D]

I use Hyper-V myself and I like it quite a bit. My specs:

Case: CoolerMaster Cosmos
PSU: CoolerMaster Real Power 1000
Motherboard: Intel D5400XS motherboard
CPU(s): 2x Intel Core 2 Quad QX9775 Extreme Edition @ 3.6GHz
CPU Cooling: 2x Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme
RAM: 4x2GB Micron PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz FB-DIMMs (8GB Total)
Video/GPU: XFX Geforce GTX 280 XXX Edition
Primary HDD: Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB (OS)
Additional HDD: 2x Western Digital SE16 500GB (Storage)
Optical: Samsung 16x DVD-R/RW
Host OS: Windows Server 2008 R2

 

[grdoorguy]

Yeah your server is a beast. Just out of curiosity... I see you have gone with the Extreme edition of the dual core processor other than the obvious price difference I have never seen a noticeable difference during actual use. How has you experience been with them? Does the high end video card benefit your Hyper-V? I'm currently just running an 8400gs but I have a couple of ATI cards lying around I could use instead.

 

[Dan_D]

Yeah your server is a beast. Just out of curiosity... I see you have gone with the Extreme edition of the dual core processor other than the obvious price difference I have never seen a noticeable difference during actual use. How has you experience been with them? Does the high end video card benefit your Hyper-V? I'm currently just running an 8400gs but I have a couple of ATI cards lying around I could use instead.

Actually the CPUs are both quad cores, not dual core CPUs for a total of 8 physical processor cores. Honestly the server's configuration is as such because it is my old gaming rig. I built a new one when the Core i7's came out as they allow for much better multi-GPU scaling than Core 2 derived processors do. It made sense to use the Skulltrail system for server duties as the hardware really is better suited for that task than it is gaming. Additionally I needed to build the server anyway, so I used it as an excuse to move the Skulltrail to that role and buy myself new hardware for gaming. The QX9775's are no different than their equivalently clocked Xeon counterparts. The only advantage the QX9775 has over comparable Xeons is the unlocked multiplier. I have another hard drive I can use with that system to run Windows XP so that friends can play games on it. That's the real reason why I kept the video card in there. While running the server OS, I have no use for the extra performance it offers.

I need to add more drives to the array and bust out my LSI MegaRAID 8038ELP that's laying around.

 

[grdoorguy]

Just an update to this thread if anyone is interested the 2008 R2 Hyper-V box has not worked out well. My WHS VM frequently goes haywire maxing out 2 cores. I eventually gave up, pulled the drives and half the RAM and set it aside. Then loaded up WHS by itself on the box for now till I get some interest back in the project.

This was working working out very well but I have ran in to new an interesting issues in WHS to solve daily. Everything from intermittent streaming while transcoding to the occasional service failing at startup. The biggest issue I have with WHS as of yet has been the way it accesses drives. I have to RIP to an extra drive separate from the WHS storage or the box will not stream video at the same time. Before anyone brings it up yes I know I should probably rip on the workstation and copy to the server but with a quad core and 4 gb of ram I wouldn't think it would be affecting resources terribly.

 

[white_devil]

I was considering installing WHS in a Hyper-V VM just to play around with it, guess I'll stick with putting it on some old hardware instead. Thanks for the update.

 

[pjkenned]

Just as a FYI: I use WHS in a Hyper-V VM daily and have been for months after two months of testing. http://www.servethehome.com/8-nas-servers-virtualized/ for a picture.

If you are having stability problems, it is NOT WHS in a 2008 R2 VM, and you may want to look at configuration/ hardware.