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Virtualization plans...am I being realistic?

N

nry

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2008
Messages
409
Hi

After reading various bits and bobs on here, I have decided that while im re working my network

I need a server on 24/7 for various small tasks, eg downloading, web server etc

I have the following (which I understand should be able to run some pretty simple VMs), which would run 24/7 as it uses between 50-60w at idle
CPU: AMD 5050e
RAM: 2x 2GB DDR2
HDD: 320GB (might have two in software RAID1, not sure yet)

I then also have my master server, which I use for benchmarking various applications for work (in VMs), data processing, Im also planning on using it as a TV server
Spec:
CPU: AMD FX6100
RAM: 4x 4GB DDR3
HDD: 2x 320GB RAID1 (again likely to be software)

Im wondering about selling my two media PCs (partly to fund a new motherboard for the master server!!) and having them virtulized on the master server, then using the GPU pass through to playback 1080p movies using DXVA inside windows 7 VMs

Been looking at SAPPHIRE PURE Black 990FX due to having so many PCIe slots, having a chipset which supports pass through? and dual gigabit lan (which im assuming can be teamed)

Now for my questions:
Is this idea even feasible?
If I use Xen for this, what sort of GUI software is available to manage them?
How well does DXVA perform in this sort of situation?
Am I a idiot? :)

Thanks for any input :)
 
My other thought has just occurred to me
I also have a file server which powers up and down as required.

What if I upgrade this the master server spec, use PCIe pass through on the SAS controller to a VM too
Reduces the number of systems I need to have running, and im not left with the job of squashing 4 systems + network gear etc into a 12U rack!!

Or am I going too far now?
 
As long as you have the horsepower, you can do it. Do some rough calculations of your memory, capacity, iops, utilization etc. and see if the kind of usage you require can be handled by the hardware. If so, there is no reason at all while you can't put it all together.

My only experience has been playing with an ESXi server to host virtualized Ubuntu and virtualized Server 2008 but on that same ESXi server I set up virtualized linux storage appliance and connected it via iSCSI and NAS and it all worked great and management was so simply.

Virtualization is fun!
 
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I think the spec I have should be sufficient for what Im doing, considering Ill never be working and using the server to full capacity for work while watching a film, so I 'think' it should be ok.

I have read something saying that you can only use 1 GFX card to full capability at a time, so I wouldnt be able to run multiple media pc's virtulisated simultaneously.

Also could do with some nice GUI software for managing all this :)
 
Im really stuck on the software front here.

I want something so I can easily manage all the guest VMs (ideally one control panel which will control both physical hosts)

Is this going to be possible for free? Well out of my depth here!
 
VMware vCenter isn't exactly "free" but you could keep reinstalling the 60 day trial. Don't really know of any 3rd party products that have the same feature set as vCenter for free.

images
 
Well iv gone for VMware

Host 1 (24/7) - 60w idle:
AMD 5050e
Asus board (780 chipset, will try get exact model) (think thats the model number)
8GB DDR2 (4x 2GB)
320GB datastore

Host 2 (only powered when required) - 100w +:
AMD FX6100 (6 core)
16GB DDR3 (4x 4GB)
Sapphire Pure Black 990FX
3ware 9690SA RAID controller
120gb 2.5" 7200rpm master datastore
a bunch of various video cards (going to play to see which is best etc)
My plan is to VM a NAS of some sort with all my disks and maybe order some more 3TB disks, but my left over 1TB's put them in a RAID10 for the datastores of the media PCs etc
That might not even be possible!

But I have some new toys turning up tomorrow so should be able to start building stuff up from then on.

Im wondering how crazy I can be, and if I can VM a workstation for Mac OSX with passthrough! Might be going a little bit mad, but iv got some free time so ill play and see what happens.

If it turns out to be a success, ill upgrade 6 months down the line to a Xeon processor with 6 cores and hyperthreading, but we will see

What I would like to do, is maybe upgrade host 1, try and make it even lower powered but have VT-d on this, if I managed that I wouldnt feel so bad VMing my pfSense box then I could pass the WAN nic directly to it
 
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