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Hey, it's been a while since I did a system build (Apple convert), let alone a server build. I've been running two separate Linux/Windows servers at my home for few years. Recently I've made my mission to lower our power usage and my first victims are going to be those servers, so I'm looking into combining them onto one ESXi server.
So I need help with a build. I tried setting up ESXi before on my [then] Windows box, an HP workstation. The hardware wasn't fully compatible so I gave up at the time.
Needs:
1 x Linux (Ubuntu), web development, torrent downloader
1 x Windows 7 - file storage, media server / convertor
I figure that's fairly low requirements, compared to the ones that need to run 5-10 VMs. The only caveat is that I want it to have very reliable storage. I currently have a fakeRAID setup on the Windows box and that does a nightly backup to an external drive. The Linux box does a complete drive backup nightly as well to a separate drive.
The lower the power the better, though going from two boxes down to one is probably already $20/month difference. I would put the budget somewhere around $1000. I could harvest parts from the current machines, but I don't have the current specs off the top of my head right now. An off the shelf server would work too.
So I need help with a build. I tried setting up ESXi before on my [then] Windows box, an HP workstation. The hardware wasn't fully compatible so I gave up at the time.
Needs:
1 x Linux (Ubuntu), web development, torrent downloader
1 x Windows 7 - file storage, media server / convertor
I figure that's fairly low requirements, compared to the ones that need to run 5-10 VMs. The only caveat is that I want it to have very reliable storage. I currently have a fakeRAID setup on the Windows box and that does a nightly backup to an external drive. The Linux box does a complete drive backup nightly as well to a separate drive.
The lower the power the better, though going from two boxes down to one is probably already $20/month difference. I would put the budget somewhere around $1000. I could harvest parts from the current machines, but I don't have the current specs off the top of my head right now. An off the shelf server would work too.
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