The Home Server Gaming PC (Xen) - possible?

[Audigex]

Hey

Just wondering about the theory on this, as I'm considering it as an idea for my next build/upgrade.

Basically I'm currently running a few home server style things on my Raspberry pi, but I'd like to move them onto a more powerful box as it has expanded beyond it's meagre hardware. At the same time, I'm too space limited to have two PCs lying around, and I have a gaming PC which isn't normally doing a lot/is in need of an upgrade.

Would it be theoretically possible to use a 6/8 core PC with plenty of RAM, with Xen as a hypervisor, and run Windows for my gaming, with a home server behind it? ie both running on the same hardware at the same time as virtual machines, but independently?

I know I could run the home server or windows as a guest in the other, but that's not quite the same thing and leaves the guest vulnerable to crashes/lockups in the other (or just having to shut the host down for updates).

Presumably I'd lose a little performance for the overhead of Xen, and some performance for the home server itself - but I was thinking that if I could dedicate a single core and a block of RAM, even perhaps a hard drive, to the home server VM, it wouldn't interfere too much with the gaming PC (6/8 cores, or even a fast quad, would probably have power to spare for the games I play). I'm thinking that if I give the home server a gig or two of RAM from 12/16, plus a core of a hex-core, I should be able to avoid most problems?

So yeah, is it possible, or would I have issues regarding hardware (GPU?) or the machines interfering with one another? Also, how fine-grained is hardware control if I want to ensure that each machine has a minimum hardware allocation (either entirely fixed, or allowing either to use spare capacity up to a limit). Similarly can I allocate amounts of the network card? ie limit the home server to 10mbps so that it can't interfere with my gaming?

Thanks!

 

[Audigex]

Perfect, thanks - I'll take a look. I'm surprised this isn't more popular, surely it's cheaper to add a little extra RAM and a better CPU than to build a whole separate home server?

 

[Audigex]

The thing for me is that I want a gaming machine (so fairly powerful hardware anyway) but I need to keep it to a budget... it makes more sense to me to add a little extra RAM and take a slight CPU penalty, but save myself the cost of a NAS. Even a high end machine running as a server is going to use less electricity a year than a NAS+costs to run the NAS.

Assuming a PC draws 100W at idle, just running a couple of lightweight linux servers, it costs ~£100 per year. Approximately 1/3 of that time I'd have my PC on anyway, so that's about £66/year a year of electricity. Even a basic NAS would use about 20W (£30/year) so I reckon on about £50 a year extra cost to run the PC at idle, as compared to just running a NAS.

To get a decent NAS is £160, plus disks. If we assume that I'd have to put the disks in my PC anyway, I'll discount them (but combining disks would probably mean a saving, as neither machine would be at 100% disk use). That's over 5 years of running the PC at idle, just to break even on buying a NAS.

Add in the fact that I've got the flexibility of putting multiple servers on the PC, and the option of using the full power of the PC when I want to (I don't want my servers limited to 500MHz or whatever a NAS has), and I think it starts to make sense.

I've tried the Raspberry Pi as a NAS idea, and while it's good, I'm not just trying to get a NAS - I want more powerful servers and I don't want to have to run them as virtual machines.