New Home Server Build. Need suggestions.

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bamtown

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Mar 25, 2010
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Completely open thread. I'm out of date when it comes to hardware and would like recommendations for building a home virtual server lab.

1) This is a server build for a virtual test lab environment. It will host about 15-20 VM's with different specs (linux, 2003, 2008, etc).

2) Budget is $2000 for hardware, possibly more if required.

3) Looking for recommendations on silent case (I've had good experiences with the P180), cpu, memory, motherboard, fans, hard drives, etc. (No mouse, keyboard or monitor.)

4) I will only be reusing a video card from my current system. It's an 8800GT (buying new card for the gaming desktop).

5) I will not be overclocking, please don't be concerned with this area.

6) I plan to build this server within the next month, but I'd like to know if there's anything significant on the horizon.

7) No major features required for the motherboard, other than supporting at least 16GB of RAM. RAID would also be nice.

8) I'll be using ESX or XenServer for the OS. Again, the main purpose of this machine is for virtualization and the board must support 16GB of RAM or more.

9) Is there a major difference between the "server" and "workstation" motherboards/memory on sites like NewEgg? I would think a workstation "server" would be sufficient for my needs.
 
This thread is better suited the Virtualization forum we have. Contact a mod to move this thread over to that forum.

But while i'm here, which RAID type would b going for? 5? 10? 6?
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I wasn't sure if this thread was suited for the Virtualization forum, because this is strictly hardware. It doesn't seem like there's many hardware topics in that forum.

RAID 5 or 10 is fine.
 
Prelim build for ya:
$480 - 2 x Intel Xeon E5504 CPU
$280 - Supermicro MBD-X8DTL-i-O Dual LGA 1366 Intel 5500 ATX Motherboard
$287 - Kingston 2 x 4GB ECC Registered DDR3 1333 RAM
$125 - Intel SSDSA2MP040G2R5 2.5" 40GB SSD
$270 - 3 x Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$390 - HighPoint RocketRAID 4320 PCI-Ex8 8 Port SATA and SAS RAID Card
$120 - Corsair 650HX 650W Modular PSU
$150 - Antec P183 ATX Case
--------
Total: $2002 plus tax and shipping.

Use the SSD as the Host OS drive. Set up the Samsung drives into a 2TB RAID 5 array. I went with ECC Registered RAM for two reason: 1) It was actually cheaper than consumer RAM and 2) it would allow you to eventually have 24GB of RAM. The P183 is the quietest case I know of and it's an updated version of the P180 case. I know modular would be a good idea with the P180 cases.
 
Will you be running many of these VM's simultaneously? If so, you'll probably want more RAM, depending on the VM's. If you need more CPU power, go for the newer Xeons, the E5600 series (hexcore).
 
$520 2x AMD Opteron 2350 Barcelona 2.0GHz Socket F 75W Quad-Core Server Processor
$295 TYAN S2927A2NRF-E Dual 1207(F) NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 ATX Dual AMD Opteron Server Motherboard
$527 2x Kingston ValueRAM 8GB (2 x 4GB) ((16gb total))
$110 OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30GXXX 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
$300 3x SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD154UI 1.5TB SATA 3.0Gb/s
$110 CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W
$120 NZXT WHISPER WHI - 001BK Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Total of 2020.. Compared to the above I tried to give a complete alternate set of parts to choose from.. This one also has more capacity (but slower), but doesn't use a dedicated SATA controller so if you added too many more drives you would need a controller..
 
bastage said:
Total of 2020.. Compared to the above I tried to give a complete alternate set of parts to choose from.. This one also has more capacity (but slower), but doesn't use a dedicated SATA controller so if you added too many more drives you would need a controller..
Click to expand...

Well the main reason why I included a Hardware RAID controller was that the OP was planning on using RAID 5. Considering that very very few motherboards in the world have a true hardware RAID controller and the fact that the onboard RAID of most mobos would be essentially software RAID which would use the PC's CPU at all times, I figured that the OP would want every once of CPU processing power possible as well significantly faster HDD speeds in the RAID array.
 
Danny, you are correct about the RAID controller. Also, a hypervisor with 15-20 active VM's pretty much requires it.

Great suggestions and contrast guys. Thanks so much for your help.
 
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