Spec me a home server for VMs
- Thread starter ringo747
- Start date
In the way that wrong stepping whilst making VM additions or settings tweaks can result in frequent BSODs of the host.
Whilst AMDs are cheap, they most certainly aren't (in their desktop counterparts at least) renowned for their stability and uptime.
I knew this was a concern back in the Athlon+/A64 days but I had no idea this was still the case, which is a shame, as the extra cores would be really useful without spending a fortune on a 6 core i7.
I think I am going have to disagree with the stability part, went from a box running 24/7 with a q6600 @3gz to a box running 24/7 running the x6 at 4ghz... as yet I have only noticed better performance no change in stability to mention when changing settings or assigning resources to vm's.
I possibly would have agreed if soomebody said that a xeon is a better bet than a q6600 or something along those lines but consumer chip vs consumer chip? there really isn't that much in it.
For a single user install dev environment over 4 virtual servers you wont get a better desktop chip than the x6 for the money I don't think.
personally I went for the following to accompany the 1090T:
Gigabyte ga-890gpa-ud3
8gb corsair xms3
I possibly would have agreed if soomebody said that a xeon is a better bet than a q6600 or something along those lines but consumer chip vs consumer chip? there really isn't that much in it.
For a single user install dev environment over 4 virtual servers you wont get a better desktop chip than the x6 for the money I don't think.
personally I went for the following to accompany the 1090T:
Gigabyte ga-890gpa-ud3
8gb corsair xms3
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Never had a problem with AMD and Virtualisation, been running mine since 2009, its ran:
VMware ESXi
XenServer
Xen (on CentOS)
VMs:
Windows 2008 R2 64bit
SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Server
Netscaler
Citrix XenApp
Citrix Xendesktop
Vyatta
Oracle
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 32/64 bit 5.X / 6.X
MySQL
Zenoss
Nagios
CentOS
blah blah blah, uptime / stability 100%
Quad Core AMD
Will always buy AMD for home DEV VM systems and work lab, best bang for buck imho - looking to upgrade to 6 core AMD asap.
When deciding what to buy the overall performance of the required VMs should be considered as most of the time these days its memory and disk IO which limit you rather than CPU.
Any of the modern desktop chips will do fine for most things as long as you chuck enough memory and disk at it and make sure that the NIC is supported with the Hyprevisor you want to run.
I've got an VDI demo environment running on an i3-540 with 8GB of ram using Xen Server and that works very well.
Any of the modern desktop chips will do fine for most things as long as you chuck enough memory and disk at it and make sure that the NIC is supported with the Hyprevisor you want to run.
I've got an VDI demo environment running on an i3-540 with 8GB of ram using Xen Server and that works very well.
Sorry, but there's a lot of rubbish being talked about in this thread.
This is for the home environment, for a test bed. Uptime isn't key here so overclocking can be done. Not my choice, but if its good enough for your desktop pc then it should be good enough for a test bed. Also to suggest AMD is less stable than intel is just a joke.
Similarly you can over provision CPU and RAM with vm's. I don't recommend over provisioning CPU's but RAM is totally different. ESXi has a fantastic memory management. This is my lab, running are 4 instances of 2008 r2, sure the servers are idling but in a test rig will they ever be loaded? Look just how little the guest memory is being used by the Domain controllers. Perfect for some ballooning.
I'd choose ESXi not only is it free, but also the leading hypervisor out, however if you want to use it as a desktop aswell vmware workstation is brilliant for firing up a test bed. It's exactly what it was designed for. Running a virtual environment on top of a host OS isn't always a bad option. It allows for a much wider hardware support level and flexibility within a test rig.
So what if a page takes a few seconds to load, or a menu. You are not benchmarking here. As a proof of concept you put up with any speed issues, as its not the goal is it?
Disks IMO are critical, spindles really count. Much more so than CPU or RAM.
This is for the home environment, for a test bed. Uptime isn't key here so overclocking can be done. Not my choice, but if its good enough for your desktop pc then it should be good enough for a test bed. Also to suggest AMD is less stable than intel is just a joke.
Similarly you can over provision CPU and RAM with vm's. I don't recommend over provisioning CPU's but RAM is totally different. ESXi has a fantastic memory management. This is my lab, running are 4 instances of 2008 r2, sure the servers are idling but in a test rig will they ever be loaded? Look just how little the guest memory is being used by the Domain controllers. Perfect for some ballooning.
I'd choose ESXi not only is it free, but also the leading hypervisor out, however if you want to use it as a desktop aswell vmware workstation is brilliant for firing up a test bed. It's exactly what it was designed for. Running a virtual environment on top of a host OS isn't always a bad option. It allows for a much wider hardware support level and flexibility within a test rig.
So what if a page takes a few seconds to load, or a menu. You are not benchmarking here. As a proof of concept you put up with any speed issues, as its not the goal is it?
Disks IMO are critical, spindles really count. Much more so than CPU or RAM.
Thats helpful ecksmen. I think a 6 core AMD will do me along with 8/12GB RAM and a few smallish disks RAIDed.
I will be running a DC/Exchange box so it shouldn't be using many resources. SQL and SharePoint will be somewhat different but it will only be single user stuff so not massive usage.
Is ESXi funny with NICs or are most generally supported?
I will be running a DC/Exchange box so it shouldn't be using many resources. SQL and SharePoint will be somewhat different but it will only be single user stuff so not massive usage.
Is ESXi funny with NICs or are most generally supported?
Ringo... like yourself I wanted to have a fully functional desktop for gaming etc so as ecksman explains and i agree... I went down the VMware Workstation route building up a test bed on there which I can just turn on and off as I require. Even using Vista x64 as the host os i have no real performance issues when kicking up several vm's.
If you want the flexibility of having a normal desktop and the use of your testing/ coding environment then vmware workstation offers flexibility and is not fussy at all with hardware. For resource allocation I would expect the sql server to be happily eating up 4gb of ram just ticking over after search server and the rest is installed.
If you want the flexibility of having a normal desktop and the use of your testing/ coding environment then vmware workstation offers flexibility and is not fussy at all with hardware. For resource allocation I would expect the sql server to be happily eating up 4gb of ram just ticking over after search server and the rest is installed.
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