Server Specs Help

[Eriedor]

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

 

[Eriedor]

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]

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).

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]

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.

 

[Eriedor]

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.