Server Specs Help

Eriedor

Eriedor

Eriedor

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Posted this in general hardware and didn't get any response (probably considered boring as no triquad-sli etc)

I'm looking to fire up a server at home for the following purposes:

Web Server
SharePoint
VMWare server hosting multiple development/testing environments (XP,Vista,Linux)
File Share

It will be run on Windows 2k8 which I have a copy of already.

Now the hardware is where I need help, I was thinking along the lines of quad core 8gb of ram and 1TB raid 1 hard disk setup.

Main questions are what motherboard I should use (any with two gigabit nics?) Should I use a dedicated raid controller card? What PSU shall I use?

Cheers
 
For VMware use it depends if your going to be running multiple vm's at the *same* time. As with the other services (web server etc.) it depends on how hammered they're going to get.


Personally my dev / server box is:
AMD Phenom X3 @ 2.4Ghz, 8GB DDRII, 4TB via 6 SATA drives, Debian AMDx64 Lenny [though I do change this setup a fair bit]

I hit performance problems when running two or more virtual machines (VirtualBox 32Bit Linux clients). Deals with anything else with ease though. I think I should have gone for a slightly faster CPU (probably a core 2 quad). RAM is plenty though.

I wouldn't bother with dual nics unless you need them (you can always add a PCI nic later as they're cheap as peanuts). You probably want a fairly hefty PSU, especially if you going to be adding multiple hard disks. If you want a RAID setup to for a hardware controller card and not rely on the rubbish software built in ones.
 
Eriedor said:
Posted this in general hardware and didn't get any response (probably considered boring as no triquad-sli etc)

I'm looking to fire up a server at home for the following purposes:

Web Server
SharePoint
VMWare server hosting multiple development/testing environments (XP,Vista,Linux)
File Share

It will be run on Windows 2k8 which I have a copy of already.

Now the hardware is where I need help, I was thinking along the lines of quad core 8gb of ram and 1TB raid 1 hard disk setup.

Main questions are what motherboard I should use (any with two gigabit nics?) Should I use a dedicated raid controller card? What PSU shall I use?

Cheers
Click to expand...


It really depends on the sort of load you anticipate putting on the systems. If it was me, I wouldnt use 2k8 as the host, I'd put ESXi on as the host and run everything else as guest VMs. This does limit you in terms of compatibility though.

I've personally had awesome VM performance from the AMD Opteron Quad 1.9Ghz HE CPUs. I virtualised one of our DB servers from an older dedicated machine with dual 2.8Ghz Xeons, it now sits on a Sun box with the Opterons alongside 6 other machines and the DB performance has nearly doubled.

You can get an HP ML115G5 with a 2.1Ghz Quad for £413 from a competitor, by the time you add the memory and the HDs you're probably looking at about £650.

Won't play Crysis on high detail though :)
 
I'm running an x2 [email protected], Asus M2N-MX motherboard, 4GB RAM, Gigabit NIC and 1 x 400GB RAID1 OS array and 2x 1TB RAID 1 storage arrays. I'm using the onboard raid controller for the OS and an Adaptec PCIE raid card for the other two.

Its been running constantly for about 2 years, with a few minor upgrades over time from hand me downs from my main PC. It runs Server 2k8 with Exchange for testing purposes for work. It acts as a file server for the house and I run a few other servers such as Team Speak and also a couple VMs.
 
Thanks for the help gents.

Liking the idea of running on ESXi, I only thought win2k8 as I have it spare and want to learn a bit about it, but I can easily run that as VM.

I will be running some VM's concurrently but nothing CPU intensive:

1 for IIS hosting websites & SharePoint* (for dev sites not prod)
1 for a dev environment (so I can dev on any computer or remotely)
1 for SQL 2k8*
1 for fileshare/svn* (win2k8)
1 for Win7 test
1 for Vista test
1 for XP test
1 for Linux test

*running persistently, the rest will be spun up as required.

I think 8GB RAM is fine for the moment but would like to accomodate future upgrades. I'll deff get a hardware raid card as have had problems with software raid.

My main queries still surround what motherboard and processor to use!

Will a Q6600 be enough or should I be getting something more "server class"
 
Eriedor said:
My main queries still surround what motherboard and processor to use!

Will a Q6600 be enough or should I be getting something more "server class"
Click to expand...

Mine is all running on a budget Asus M2N-MX and X2 CPU! :)

24/7 use for 2 years and not a single problem.. I would say a Q6600 will be good enough coupled with a reliable board.
 
I'm no expert, but I expect running 1TB RAID 1 will not offer enough throughput to run that many VM's, the CPU can be as fast as anything but if the data isn't passed to it quick enough then your going to have issues (SQL alone is going to hammer the disks).
 
Richard_16v said:
I'm no expert, but I expect running 1TB RAID 1 will not offer enough throughput to run that many VM's, the CPU can be as fast as anything but if the data isn't passed to it quick enough then your going to have issues (SQL alone is going to hammer the disks).
Click to expand...

If its just for testing/evaluation and a bit of light domestic work, it'll be fine.

4 x 500gb in RAID10 would give more throughput, though I expect it would be overkill
 
Richard_16v said:
I'm no expert, but I expect running 1TB RAID 1 will not offer enough throughput to run that many VM's, the CPU can be as fast as anything but if the data isn't passed to it quick enough then your going to have issues (SQL alone is going to hammer the disks).
Click to expand...

Good point, I'll up the raid to raid 10, but as mentioned the environments are all for testing/staging environments handling only the smallest amount of concurrent users.

ESXi seems to support a fair amount of motherboards and raid controllers, I don't see that it will cause a problem.
 
Eriedor said:
Good point, I'll up the raid to raid 10, but as mentioned the environments are all for testing/staging environments handling only the smallest amount of concurrent users.

ESXi seems to support a fair amount of motherboards and raid controllers, I don't see that it will cause a problem.
Click to expand...

I honestly wouldnt bother then, unless the RAID card you were planning getting supports it and you can get 500gb drives for 50% of a tb drive.
 
Ok I'll hook up a raid 1 first of all and see how performance goes. Can always add extra drives and migrate to raid 10 retrospectively.
 
Or even if your card doesnt support RAID10, just add a second mirror.

In my old job I built a machine for testing. The idea was to have a VMWare clone of our existing network that I could test upgrades etc on before doing it live.

It was running on VMware server (in the days before ESXi) and had 12 server machines, about 600gb data total, running. It could sustain a user load of about 10~15 users before it started to get swamped.

That was a C2Q 6600, 8Gb RAM and a single 750gb SATA drive so I think you'll be fine :)
 
Eriedor said:
ESXi seems to support a fair amount of motherboards and raid controllers, I don't see that it will cause a problem.
Click to expand...

I tried ESXi and I found it quite picky about hardware, deffinately likes server class hardware a lot more than anything else.. It wouldn't install on any PC in the office, my laptop, my home PC or home server..
 
Hardware choice doesn't seem too bad for ESXi after checking the list ianid posted. Deffintely worth a bash considering it's free, can always resort to win 2k8 if it fails.
 
As burnsy said, Hyper-V is another option if your copy of 2k8 has it - if there's windows drivers for it, it should work with Hyper-V.
 
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