Home Server or? - Spec Me

[randomshenans]

Right, I would like to get something for at home, so I can set up a domain. I'd like to run Esxi on it, but also would like to pass through some of the gfx fire power to a win 7 VM as well.

So, are there any home system components that would allow me to do this? I was looking at: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-038-EA

As it supports 2 cpus and enough RAM to run the VMs I'm after (Setting up SP13, DC, Client win 8 machine)

But with the above board, can you pass through the Gfx via Esxi to the VMs?

Or am I better off just going proper server spec, and buying a macbook pro/ another machine?

Thoughts welcomed. Not specc'd a machine in ages!

 

[101001101]

See this VMWare thread:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1825717

I know it says 2010 on page 1 but the last page is 1 month old.

Personally I would split it, baremetal machine for the graphical power and use another machine for VMware / domain controller, you don't need 2 sockets for that at home - one 4 - 6 - 8 core processor if you want to run lots of VMs (I'm thinking AMD here) is more than enough, memory is more the bottleneck from quad core up.

AD does not require much resource VM wise, pretty much anything server related at home is not going to chew through much CPU unless you're working through huge quantities of data, in which case I wouldn't run it on Windows anyway.