Cheap virtualisation test box

Warbie

Warbie

Warbie

Soldato
Joined
30 Sep 2003
Posts
6,189
Hey all. I need to put together a machine for people to practise building servers (up to 2008r2), exchange (up to 2010), SQL, and for messing about with esx and hyper v. It needs to be able to handle 2-4 virtual machines at a time. I've only ever built servers on server hardware in the past and am a little worried a PC won't be up to the job. We've got spare disks, case, optical drives etc and want something cheap that can be kicked about the office. Do you think the below would be adequate?


AMD Bulldozer FX-6 Six Core 6100 Black Edition 3.30Ghz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail with FREE Deus Ex & Dirt Showdown PC Games

£115.99
(£96.66)

Corsair Vengeance 8GB (1x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Single Channel Module (CMZ8GX3M1A1600C10) * 4

£239.96
(£199.96)

Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard

£59.99
(£49.99)

Corsair Builder Series CX 600W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-600CXUKV2)

£52.98
(£44.15)

Sub Total :

£390.76


Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
 
More than sufficent for what you are running!

My Dell T300 which is currently running Xeon 3222 (Quad-Core 2.5GHz) with 24Gb and 4x500Gb SATA in RAID 0+1 is more than I need, and currently im running 7 VM's on using ESXi, and of those 7, I have 3 Ubuntu 12.04LTS x64 OS's, a Win7, Win8 Preview(not working yet...), 1 Server 2008 R2, and SBS 2011.

All running OK, and no performance issues, so your rig should be more than adequate :)

For reference, the Ubuntu servers are running a support ticketing system, 2x CS:GO DS', and the 3rd is currently just on, but not doing anything yet. the R2 is connected to the SBS2011 domain that is running and they all run almost 24/7, and I have no perfomance issues on any of the servers :)
 
You've got the right idea, Bulldozer + as much RAM as you can fit. I'd maybe think about a small SSD to host the Hypervisor and use a 7200 RPM larger capacity drive for the hosts.
 
sldsmkd said:
You've got the right idea, Bulldozer + as much RAM as you can fit. I'd maybe think about a small SSD to host the Hypervisor and use a 7200 RPM larger capacity drive for the hosts.
Click to expand...

Ooooooh yea, along with storage(completely forgot about :eek:) but when creating your VM's within ESXi, then make sure you create them with Thin Provisioning. This means that if you tell it to have a 50Gb, it doesn't take up a chuck of 50Gb. It will allow use up to 50Gb, but if the image size is only 15Gb after install, then it only uses 15Gb of your actual storage. Doing this allows you to over provision your total datastore. So becareful, if you provision a total of 550Gb, but you only have a datastore of 500Gb, then fill your VM's up to the brim, you have excess of 50Gb which cannot be written too and that will split across your VMs. If that helps :)


http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...nguage=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1005418
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Bulldozer FX-8 Eight Core 8120 Black Edition 3.10Ghz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail with FREE Deus Ex & Dirt Showdown PC Games £134.99
2 x Corsair XMS3 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX16GX3M2A1600C11) £95.99 (£191.98)
1 x Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 AMD 760G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard £53.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 600W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-600CXUKV2) £52.98
Total : £445.93 (includes shipping : £10.00).



The 7xx AM3 boards come with integrated graphics whereas the 9xx ones don't and you would need an extra graphics card. The 2x16Gb kit is cheaper than 4x8Gb. Also the subtotal in the OP is sans VAT. Actual total is £468.92 which makes this cheaper.
 
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Nice one, Clav. Have a virtual pint on me :)

Cheers for the other suggestions guys - i'll look into cheap ssds, but otherwise we've got plenty of spare disks laying around.
 
Warbie said:
Oh, quick question. The Asus mobo says max memory is 16gb - is that for all slots?
Click to expand...

Balls, I totally missed that. 16Gb would be the total limit, ie 4x4Gb dimms. For 32 Gb it looks like you will need to go with a 9xx board and seperate graphics card.

With that being said 16Gb would give you 4 VM's with 2Gb each and still leave 8Gb for the host OS. My VM host server in work gets by fine with 16Gb and 8 cores. Just depends if the extra cost is worth it for you.

Something like this (32Gb ram):
YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Bulldozer FX-8 Eight Core 8120 Black Edition 3.10Ghz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail with FREE Deus Ex & Dirt Showdown PC Games £134.99
2 x Corsair XMS3 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX16GX3M2A1600C11) £95.99 (£191.98)
1 x Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £59.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 600W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-600CXUKV2) £52.98
1 x MSI HD 5450 1024MB GDDR5 Low Profile PCI-Express Graphics Card £22.80
Total : £474.73 (includes shipping : £10.00).




vs this (16Gb Ram):
YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Bulldozer FX-8 Eight Core 8120 Black Edition 3.10Ghz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail with FREE Deus Ex & Dirt Showdown PC Games £134.99
1 x Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 AMD 760G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard £53.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 600W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-600CXUKV2) £52.98
2 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £37.99 (£75.98)
Total : £329.94 (includes shipping : £10.00).

 
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You can go second hand, get dual intel xeon on dual socket ddr2 mobo... Although ram for ddr2 is not exactly cheap and is outdated... You can pick up 2xQuad Core Xeon L5420 + dual socket mobo for about 160 quid. I know a Lineage 2 server with 3000 online running on this CPU with 16gb of ram.

Picking up ddr2 from your work should be easier than ddr3
 
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