File server or Virtual Machine?

[mnc fear]

Lads I have a bit of a dilemna

I have recently started a overhaul of my machines

I had a Phenom for gaming and a WHS for storing and serving my home but....

since upgrading to a Phenom II I now have 3 machines-
PhenomII, Phenom(Mobo Takes PhenomII) and my WHS Sempron(Mobo Takes 6000+)

Ive thought about a few scenarios

I could use the Phenom as a Virtual machine and just mess around with different OS's- but I would need to upgrade the RAM quite a bit as when I got the Phenom II I downgraded to 2 gig

I could also get rid of the Sempron and make the Phenom my Home Server which may even be a bit overkill as WHS runs most things really

I could also get rid of the Phenom and get a nicer case for my server as its in a total mincer cheapie

I guess this is pretty much aimed at guys who have a few machines or those who chose against it

If I keep the phenom I dont know whether it would be underutilised and as I would want to connect to it directly- unless I can do it on a lappy as my Main Rig is quite a noisy beast

This said Im also in a cupboard under the stairs like Harry Potter so things cant be much louder due to this


Thanks for looking guys

 

[BlueMhz]

I asked myself the same type of questions a year or so ago.

If you like the idea of having lots of different machines, then use your Phenom and turn it into a VM host. You can then run WHS and other OSs as VMs too. If you just want to run WHS and maybe 1 or 2 other VMs that aren't too intensive resource wise then 2GB may be enough.

For my own setup, I have an Intel E6400 with 8GB RAM running a mix of 10-12 Windows and Linux machines, and ESX shows memory used at about 7GB.

The old hardware I used to have (couple of P4s, and AMD 3000) aren't particular power efficient to be leaving on 24/7 so I gave them away to friends and family as they were upgrades for them.