Virtualize Home Office Setup - Power Concerns

[rosco]

I currently have a SBS 2003 server, a Trixbox server, NAS device, and a spare workstation always powered on in my home office. Additionally, when I am in my office I have my laptop which is my main workstation.

What I am looking to do is to combine everything into one box that runs several virtual machines.

So, first of all, what hardware would you recommend that is reliable yet uses less power? For exampleI want great uptime so was thinking redundant power supplies however that will take up more power as a result.

Can I virtualize my NAS device? I was thinking something like Openfiler with a large amount of storage space allocated to it. Although, I suppose I could just allocate it to my virtual SBS machine and have it do the file storage as well.

Thanks for your help.

 

[FrostBite]

A few questions for you first:
- What is your budget? Can't buy what you can't afford
- What do you have running on server 1?
- How tech savy are you, and how important is up time? This is the white box (DIY) vs Dell/HP
- What is the NAS for? Strictly work or (since you are at a HOME office), do you mainly use it to store home media?
- Is noise a concern for you? Some servers can get a bit loud.

I don't really see how you could dramatically use less power if you went to a virtualized server. The 2 server boxes you can virtualize into 1, the NAS I would leave it on the side and use it to backup (WHS) along with a secondary external hard drive for a second set up backups, the spare computer is a spare computer so you can't really replace that, and you use the laptop so you can't replace that either. If you did want to virtualize, maybe a Dell 1950 since they are roughly ~$1k if you want something fast and easy, or you can build a server yourself for a lot cheaper and just use low power parts.

 

[sabregen]

SBS and Trixbox can be virtualized, yes, and easily. Do you have a virtualization platform picked out yet? Each one will have a different P2V process to get you from point A to point B. After that, what is the model # on the NAS? some use a chopped or stripped copy of Windows CE or Windows Home Server. Others use a proprietary OS which will make life more difficult to P2V, and you may have to revert to a manual file transfer after you get your VMs up and running. I would just let SBS be your file server, honestly, but after the P2V is done.

What is your hardware budget, and what is it that you're hoping to accomplish by virtualizing, so that we have a better understand of what your goals for this project are? Any box that has redundant power is likely going to cost you a good bit of change to build (over $1k), as the chassis that support and come with this option installed (dual PSUs... or triple... and the midplane to facilitate the hotswaps, etc) are going to start at $400-ish. if you're truly looking for uptime, that will be contrary to your budgetary needs. You can't have uptime and cost efficient, if the goal is almost 100% uptime. There's a pain threshold for everyone, and it's always the balance between these two factors. I can spec you a box, or recommend one that's build by a top tier OEM that has warranty support and quality controls so tight that if you were to every launch a support call, you'd be utterly ANNOYED at how frequently they called you back to check on status, and it would have excellent uptime, and immediate responses from the manufacturer... but it would probably cost more than most people's houses. The flip side is that you can build something uber cheap, and very easy to fix with no support at all. Somewhere in the middle is where most people fall. You will have to let us know what your goals are, for us to be able to get you started in the right direction.