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recommendations for a noob?

C

Chasx003

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 26, 2005
Messages
163
I graduated college about 3 weeks ago, and since I haven't quite landed a job yet figure I'd put some of my current free time into playing around with servers.

I don't want to put a lot of money into this, as i'll likely only be running a few services, like mail, dns, and maybe exchange.

I was originally looking into buying an old p4 pc off of craigslist and just running it as a mail server, but then I saw that on ebay I could get an older dell poweredge server for about 100 shipped. Would that be a wise buy? I've read they are loud so im not sure that would be a wise buy?

I guess that's enough backstory kinda, my questions would be:

What's a good cheap learning system to buy? (And by cheap I mean around 100-150, preferably a system with intel-v)

Any good articles or guides to read? I've read a few tutorials about running vm's inside
ubuntu server, but what would you recommend using as the host?

Thanks!
 
If you're looking for cheap for playing around with, just grab a used desktop with Intel VT or AMD-V. If you're just testing, 4GB of RAM should be fine for learning the ropes. If you're looking for something more "industry standard." Play with Hyper-V, VMware or Citrix XenServer, if you don't have access to MS licensing, you can get VMware or Citrix XenServer on the free side. Citrix is probably your best bet, because it's hardware compatibility will allow you to run it on an oddball desktop with Intel VT or AMD-V without issue. You can then load up Linux or Windows VM's, just grab an OEM disc of Windows for playing around with, it should have enough time before forcing you to activate it; enough to play with things. :)
 
$100-$150 on a P4 system ??

Two questions I would ask:

1. What is the max amount of ram the system can take? (I'm guessing a P4 system will max at 4GB)
2. What will it cost to max out the memory capacity of that P4 system?

Which would lead to a new question:

Is that $100-$150 P4 system still worth it?.

Save up a little more and get a more modern system
capable of running your favorite virtualization software with 64bit Windows Guests.
You will also want to make sure you can cost effectively upgrade the memory to a minimum
of 8GB (I'd personally spec out a system with a min. of 16GB capacity limit).

An example system would be a Dell Optiplex 755 (MT or SDT form factor = 8GB ram cap.).
They go for $200 or so on Dell's auction site ... The units with the 3GHz C2D processors support
VT-x + VT-d.

Note: the Optiplex 755 has a max of 8GB memory.
 
Yeah, i mean, I'm not really going to spend much more money than $150. I'm not looking to do anything major with this. Like this is purely for fun/education. I would probably only be running 2-3 VMs, one would be mail, prolly one DNS, and one just to goof with.. I might just buy a crappy p4 and not worry about virtulization stuff at all, but I just find it fascinating


I guess I should have mentioned I'm also new/learning about running servers in general
 
I started off playing around with VMware Server on an old oddball 1U server. If you get to the point of wanting to play with hosting VMs on a "SAN", look at OpenFiler. I don't think the free version of VMware Server will allow you to use iSCSI, though. Don't quote me on that.

I screwed around with VMware Server an some oddball P4 2.8 1U server with 4gb of RAM. If your budget is limited ... there is no reason why that won't work for sandbox use.

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/overview.html
http://openfiler.com/products
 
On another note, read up on the free version of ESXi ... it might work for what you are wanting to do, also.
 
I would look around on ebay for a system with an Intel Core 2 in it that supports VT (should be around $300 or less for like an optiplex 755) throw 4-8GB of RAM into it, grab ESXi 4.1 free, and start throwing some server on there.
 
I would hit up ebay for HP servers, lots of like DL380 and up series that go for under a hundred with a few harddrives, couple dual core procs and a few gigs of ram.

Thats how I got started, tho now I have moved up.
 
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