Virtual Machine PC

Crusader

Crusader

Crusader

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4 Jun 2017
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I know this section is for gaming but I can't really see another forum that is more suited for my thread.

A bit of background; I am still early in my IT career and want a machine to learning and labs. The idea is to have a PC that I can load multiple VMs to learn and experiment with different operating systems and configurations.

My initials thoughts are to have the host OS as either CentOS or the bare metal VMware vSphere Hypervisor with the VMs being Windows 10, Windows 7, Ubuntu and Kali Linux. At some point I will likely put a copy of Windows Server 2016 evaluation to experiment with as well as other Linux distros. All VMs will have their storage on my NAS via ISCSI (or at least that is the plan). All VMs are to be accessed via remote desktop via my main machine (MacBook Pro).

Below are the components I'm considering
CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master - MasterLiquid 240 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: MSI - B350M BAZOOKA Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
Storage: Sandisk - SSD PLUS 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Case: Corsair - Carbide Series 88R MicroATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM 550W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Click to expand...

I've estimated this will cost me around £607. My budget can go up to £700-50ish should I need to make any changes.

I think the most obvious thing missing is a GFX card but to the best of my knowledge, I won't need one as the virtuals will never actually use it?

I also have some concerns about drivers and how they would work in this environment. Any advice on that would be appreciated. Another thing I am unsure on is should I go for a AMD Ryzen 7 1700 instead?

This is my first self build so any tips, best practices for construction or recommended changes to better suit my requirements would be appreciated.

Thanks for reading!
 
If you go down the route of installing ESXi onto it, then the GFX card would be a bit pointless - i don't believe passthrough works quite as well for a GFX card yet.

You're right to be concerned with drivers, the hypervisor is typically made to be installed on server grade hardware, so normally includes the drivers for the typical components found there. It's been a few years since i installed mine, but i believe you can insert the necessary drivers for your own hardware into the iso so that they're available during installation. Typically for consumer grade hardware the onboard NIC is normally missing the drivers.

Edit: Just looked at your specs, i've no idea how beefy the Ryzen CPU's will be, but you may want to beef up the RAM if you plan on spinning up multiple VM's. You've not said specifically what the VMs will be used for, but any apps that are memory intensive will soon eat away at that 16GB.
 
Semple said:
If you go down the route of installing ESXi onto it, then the GFX card would be a bit pointless - i don't believe passthrough works quite as well for a GFX card yet.

You're right to be concerned with drivers, the hypervisor is typically made to be installed on server grade hardware, so normally includes the drivers for the typical components found there. It's been a few years since i installed mine, but i believe you can insert the necessary drivers for your own hardware into the iso so that they're available during installation. Typically for consumer grade hardware the onboard NIC is normally missing the drivers.

Edit: Just looked at your specs, i've no idea how beefy the Ryzen CPU's will be, but you may want to beef up the RAM if you plan on spinning up multiple VM's. You've not said specifically what the VMs will be used for, but any apps that are memory intensive will soon eat away at that 16GB.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll look into that.

Right now I'm not too concerned about the RAM. I won't be running all VMs simultaneously for now, and it's an easy component to upgrade further down the line. As for Ryzen, for the price and the amount of cores - it should be more than enough for me. I mean initially I want to brush up on Windows PowerShell and bash on the Unix side, then with Kali Linux expierement with penetration testing which is probably the point I will want to then get more RAM.
 
What all about a used enterprise grade server off eBay usually very cheap but can be a bit noisy dependant on the model.

Thinking of doing an mcsa and that's what I have been looking at.
 
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