XenClient Express - Does this fit my situation?

[jsteinm1]

I'm wondering if someone with some XenClient experience can maybe give me some insight on its capabilities. Basically, I have one desktop computer at home that is built far beyond what I need for day to day computing (i7-2600k, 24GB RAM). I currently have a Windows Server 2008 R2 AD server running as a service in VMWare Workstation and I plan to add an OpenMediaValut/FlexRAID server in the near future. I like XenClient over Workstation because this way I could reboot/control my main desktop without having to shutdown my VMs running on it first. Here are my questions/concerns:

1. With Workstation, I see the option to give a VM total control of physical harddrives, as I would give to the FlexRAID server to run a software RAID setup. Does XenClient have this capability to control a multidisk software RAID? This RAID will be used to serve up media files for my HTPC/other computers as well as host roaming user profiles. EDIT: To add to this, let me know if this is a horrible idea because I could see this setup being a house of cards. I'm looking for something to give me 1 disk fail protection, so if there is a better way please let me know.

2. I do some PC gaming, mainly just Battlefield 3. I see claims that XenClient can do this well with the proper configuration - can anyone back this claim?


I know a separate server would be best for my setup, but I don't want to add any new hardware at this point in time and I would like to utilize what excess computer power I have currently.

Thanks for any insight!

 

[gimp]

XenClient is for the abiilty to use a virtual desktop in "offline" mode.
XenClient is nothing more than a hypervisor designed to run on laptop or otherwise non-server hardware.

at least, as far as I'm aware and what I've read.
unless it's gotten better, there was also pretty limited hardware compatibility.