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Hey Everybody,
I want to build a server with either ESXi or Hyper-V as the hypervisor. I want to use this as a test bed for learning about Windows Server 2008 R2, Linux, and just general testing around of Win 7/XP. I want to be able to test out a lot of things in Windows Server just to get a basic over view of what it can do. I'm going to be a senior at uni and want to just get a good grasp on Servers and Linux (something I'm really lacking right now).
Here's the thing.. I also want to create a small file server (2-3TB) within this same server, so I'm guessing I could also set up a couple of 5400rpm hard drives and have a guest OS be the file server (more on this in a bit).
I'm just wondering what I should be looking for. I guess I plan on having maybe a couple of dedicated VM's always running, and when I really want to test things (something in Server 2008 that requires a few clients, I can load up a couple XP/Win7/Linux VMs). So what I'm seeing is that I'll probably exhibit the pareto principal (about 75% of the time will be spent running a couple VMs, 20% of the time running 3-4 VMs, and maybe 5% of the time running 5+ VMs). I don't forsee any activity being too intense, but I would like to be able to expand tasks.
So I guess I see this as being a) building myself a dedicated file/media server b) having it also have the ability to become a highly utilized test bed.
My overall goal is to have something be powerful, but not too expensive. I was looking at using the new Phenom X6's (as the Intel 6 cores won't be coming out til 2011) since it seems to offer a great price/performance (especially because of the 2 extra cores compared to the i7/i5's quad-core) I think the i7 with HT is a bit too pricey for me.
I was thinking of having 8gb of RAM (I don't see how I can afford more, and looking at it, that should be more than enough 95% of the time.. [maybe not enough in that extra 5% when I'm pushing the hard ware]).
What else should I take into consideration? From reading a few topics here, it seems beneficial to split the VM images over multiple hard drives. I have a 320gb WD (the 320gb platter version) available, and I might have a 120gb Seagate drive available (rather newer).
As for the file server portion, I have a 1TB WD Green drive, but i was thinking of acquiring 3 x 1.5TB or 3 x 1TB WD 4K Sector drives... As for the file server, it would be nice to be able to do a RAID like setup, but I don't think I could afford a 4 port RAID-5 card.
Would ZFS be an option to do a filesystem type implementation of RAID-5?
I guess I'm just trying to see what I should be looking at and what I could possibly do.
Thanks,
Zach
I want to build a server with either ESXi or Hyper-V as the hypervisor. I want to use this as a test bed for learning about Windows Server 2008 R2, Linux, and just general testing around of Win 7/XP. I want to be able to test out a lot of things in Windows Server just to get a basic over view of what it can do. I'm going to be a senior at uni and want to just get a good grasp on Servers and Linux (something I'm really lacking right now).
Here's the thing.. I also want to create a small file server (2-3TB) within this same server, so I'm guessing I could also set up a couple of 5400rpm hard drives and have a guest OS be the file server (more on this in a bit).
I'm just wondering what I should be looking for. I guess I plan on having maybe a couple of dedicated VM's always running, and when I really want to test things (something in Server 2008 that requires a few clients, I can load up a couple XP/Win7/Linux VMs). So what I'm seeing is that I'll probably exhibit the pareto principal (about 75% of the time will be spent running a couple VMs, 20% of the time running 3-4 VMs, and maybe 5% of the time running 5+ VMs). I don't forsee any activity being too intense, but I would like to be able to expand tasks.
So I guess I see this as being a) building myself a dedicated file/media server b) having it also have the ability to become a highly utilized test bed.
My overall goal is to have something be powerful, but not too expensive. I was looking at using the new Phenom X6's (as the Intel 6 cores won't be coming out til 2011) since it seems to offer a great price/performance (especially because of the 2 extra cores compared to the i7/i5's quad-core) I think the i7 with HT is a bit too pricey for me.
I was thinking of having 8gb of RAM (I don't see how I can afford more, and looking at it, that should be more than enough 95% of the time.. [maybe not enough in that extra 5% when I'm pushing the hard ware]).
What else should I take into consideration? From reading a few topics here, it seems beneficial to split the VM images over multiple hard drives. I have a 320gb WD (the 320gb platter version) available, and I might have a 120gb Seagate drive available (rather newer).
As for the file server portion, I have a 1TB WD Green drive, but i was thinking of acquiring 3 x 1.5TB or 3 x 1TB WD 4K Sector drives... As for the file server, it would be nice to be able to do a RAID like setup, but I don't think I could afford a 4 port RAID-5 card.
Would ZFS be an option to do a filesystem type implementation of RAID-5?
I guess I'm just trying to see what I should be looking at and what I could possibly do.
Thanks,
Zach