My plan to build a computer than can do virtualization - critiques welcome!

[TorqueDog]

I noticed you're thinking of running Windows 7 virtual guests.

If all the VHDs for those guests are going to be stored on the SSD, run Win 8.1 just for the faster boot-up times. Windows 8 was a pain in the ass when running as a windowed guest because of the hot-corners, but the Start button being brought back with Windows 8.1 makes it a much more friendly windowed OS. Plus you can probably find a lot of kid-friendly games in the Windows app store.

[cmyden]

Thanks everyone, it's coming together now.

Updated the parts list...

- Case fans: Noctua NF-P12-1300 120mm Fan
- CPU fan/cooler: Noctua NH-D14 120mm & 140mm SSO CPU Cooler

Also added a gigabit network card to the list, due to the advice in these articles:

Blistering Fast Hyper-V 2012 Server
http://www.expta.com/2013/04/updated...er-v-2012.html
http://www.expta.com/2013/11/4th-gen...r2-server.html

"It's best practice to add another gigabit NIC for Hyper-V so you can separate host and VM traffic."

TorqueDog: Thanks, I think I will definitely look at using 8.1 for the guests. Those boot times look amazing, and it sounds like it's possible to make 8.1 look and behave similar to Windows 7.

[MillerTime GFG]

[photon]

Yeah I'm happy with Windows 8.1 after rebuilding a few weeks ago (well still ongoing, takes forever to get everything back just so), and when I first tried Windows 8 I really found it annoying.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by MillerTime GFG

My thoughts as well but this depends on how his home network is configured. Are you going to saturate the single link? Where else does traffic need to go? You would do this through virtual networking infrastructure and not a separate physical card unless it's going to another system or other hosts are connecting to the VMs.

The articles are based on the premise of building a server which typically hosts applications, services, databases, etc. and is not the architecture you need when building a home machine with a few guest OS's for home type usage.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by cmyden

TorqueDog: Thanks, I think I will definitely look at using 8.1 for the guests. Those boot times look amazing, and it sounds like it's possible to make 8.1 look and behave similar to Windows 7.

Don't put too much effort into that, there's an upcoming update that will introduce a Windows 7-esque form factor for the Windows 8 Start menu. It'll incorporate both the traditional All programs listing and live tiles for your Windows 8.1 Modern apps.

[Rathji]

Takes 5 minutes to install and confgure Classic Shell or Start8.

[photon]

And with Windows 8.1 I really don't even see the need.

[cmyden]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

My thoughts as well but this depends on how his home network is configured. Are you going to saturate the single link? Where else does traffic need to go? You would do this through virtual networking infrastructure and not a separate physical card unless it's going to another system or other hosts are connecting to the VMs.

The articles are based on the premise of building a server which typically hosts applications, services, databases, etc. and is not the architecture you need when building a home machine with a few guest OS's for home type usage.

Whoops, no, I just misunderstood the article, thanks for the explanation. I thought it was suggesting you should always have a separate NIC for the Host OS and the guest OS, even in a home machine.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by cmyden

Whoops, no, I just misunderstood the article, thanks for the explanation. I thought it was suggesting you should always have a separate NIC for the Host OS and the guest OS, even in a home machine.

You don't need to read those server articles. It's not what you are trying to accomplish. This would be different if you were building a bare-metal Hyper-V or ESXi host with multiple concurrent VMs always running on top of it running dedicated server functions (file server, mail server, database, etc.) and all doing constant activity, I/O's, etc.

I would have gone with all consumer hardware because of more availability, overclockability, range of parts selection. IE: You might not get the same availability for cooling solutions for a Xeon socket than i7, server ram can be more expensive, etc. An i7 and lower end consumer hardware can handle everything you are looking for based on what you have here. If you are just switching OS's for different tasks, the cheapest i5 and 8GB of ram can even handle that. My 2-year old laptop running VMware workstation does everything you are looking at already.

[cmyden]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

You don't need to read those server articles. It's not what you are trying to accomplish. This would be different if you were building a bare-metal Hyper-V or ESXi host with multiple concurrent VMs always running on top of it running dedicated server functions (file server, mail server, database, etc.) and all doing constant activity, I/O's, etc.

I would have gone with all consumer hardware because of more availability, overclockability, range of parts selection. IE: You might not get the same availability for cooling solutions for a Xeon socket than i7, server ram can be more expensive, etc. An i7 and lower end consumer hardware can handle everything you are looking for based on what you have here. If you are just switching OS's for different tasks, the cheapest i5 and 8GB of ram can even handle that. My 2-year old laptop running VMware workstation does everything you are looking at already.

Thanks, point taken. I started this quest to learn more about virtualization, particularly from a more corporate/business persepctive and due to not being aware of Win 8.1, only Server 2012, I probably went down more of the corporate/non-consumer path from the beginning. I think I might try 8.1 Enterprise though, to get a sense of it and try out some new things.

It's definitely not easy to source the parts locally, but it's been pretty easy to find them online, mostly through Newegg. Memory Express doesn't carry the cpu, motherboard, SSD drive, memory, or power supply on my list.

Overall, I think I'm happy with the Xeon E3-1230 and Asrock Z77 combo for under $400 (after $35 rebate). It seems to be a pretty comparable price/speed value to the i7-4770 or i7-4770k which looks like it would cost around $480-$515 with a similar 1150 motherboard from Asus. I like that the Xeon draws less power and I'm not into overclocking.

I think the Noctura NH-D14 should be a good cooling solution for the Xeon E3-1230 and they seem to be compatible from what I've been able to Google.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by cmyden

Thanks, point taken. I started this quest to learn more about virtualization, particularly from a more corporate/business persepctive and due to not being aware of Win 8.1, only Server 2012, I probably went down more of the corporate/non-consumer path from the beginning. I think I might try 8.1 Enterprise though, to get a sense of it and try out some new things.

It's definitely not easy to source the parts locally, but it's been pretty easy to find them online, mostly through Newegg. Memory Express doesn't carry the cpu, motherboard, SSD drive, memory, or power supply on my list.

Overall, I think I'm happy with the Xeon E3-1230 and Asrock Z77 combo for under $400 (after $35 rebate). It seems to be a pretty comparable price/speed value to the i7-4770 or i7-4770k which looks like it would cost around $480-$515 with a similar 1150 motherboard from Asus. I like that the Xeon draws less power and I'm not into overclocking.

I think the Noctura NH-D14 should be a good cooling solution for the Xeon E3-1230 and they seem to be compatible from what I've been able to Google.

I would recommend trying VMware for learning corporate/business type stuff but Hyper-V is certainly picking up steam and it's easier for you since it's mostly currently free as Microsoft is trying desperately to grab market-share. The licensing costs for the server stuff is astronomical though.

Most corporate stuff would be guests run on a bare-metal host though, and not a host Windows OS. That said, that doesn't stop you from building a virtual environment and virtual networking inside anyway on top of Windows 8.1.

[cmyden]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I would recommend trying VMware for learning corporate/business type stuff but Hyper-V is certainly picking up steam and it's easier for you since it's mostly currently free as Microsoft is trying desperately to grab market-share. The licensing costs for the server stuff is astronomical though.

Most corporate stuff would be guests run on a bare-metal host though, and not a host Windows OS. That said, that doesn't stop you from building a virtual environment and virtual networking inside anyway on top of Windows 8.1.

Thanks! Trying out VMware was initially the goal, as I have a friend who works with it in the corporate world and says it's great. I think I would need to buy a license for vSphere to use the ESXi hypervisor?

Next I looked at KVM & XEN. KVM looks great (and free!), but it sounds like hardware VGA pass through is still really tough to accomplish.

And so here I am, back to good old Microsoft.

[photon]

I think you can run the ESXi hypervisor without a license, or at least I used to do it. http://www.vmware.com/ca/en/products/vsphere-hypervisor EDIT: Well for free, not without a license.

CP runs on VMWare at ivrnet

[TorqueDog]

I have somewhat similar needs to what cmyden mentioned in a new PC, so this morning/afternoon I built a new rig and pulled the trigger on Newegg.ca.


I started with an LGA 2011, but wasn't happy with how limited I was in mainboard options, so I went to an LGA 1150. I wanted a Core i7 until I read up on our Hyper-V guidance more and realized that we recommend disabling Hyper-Threading for server workloads (it's recommended with VDI, which I'm not doing), so a Core i7 is probably unnecessary. For primary storage, the Samsung 840 Pro (256GB) was my initial choice, but the EVO is $50 cheaper, and considering the hardware I'm dealing with now, the EVO is a significant upgrade regardless of the better write speed on the pro. Read speeds are more important to me.

At the end of the day, I'm not a benchmark enthusiast. I do the majority of my gaming on my consoles, and the gaming I do on my PC is Garry's Mod. This'll let me expand a little more into PC gaming (since I've been pretty far removed from it for some time), while also taking care of the needs of my Hyper-V lab.

Final specs:
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 Black Pearl w/ USB 3.0 ATX Mid Tower Silent PC Computer Case
Processor: Intel Core i5-4670 Haswell 3.4GHz LGA 1150 84W Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80646I54670
Motherboard: ASUS GRYPHON Z87 LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 uATX Intel Motherboard
Memory: HyperX Fury White Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 Desktop Memory Model HX318C10FWK2/16
Primary Storage: SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250LW 2.5" TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) With Notebook Bundle Kit
Secondary Storage: 2 x Seagate Hybrid Drive ST2000DX001 2TB MLC/8GB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s NCQ 3.5" Desktop SSHD
Video card: ASUS GTX760-DC2OC-2GD5 GeForce GTX 760 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Power supply: EVGA 600 B 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified 600W Active PFC ATX12V v2.31/EPS 12V v2.91 3 Year Warranty 100-B1-0600-KR Power ...

Originally Posted by Rathji

Takes 5 minutes to install and confgure Classic Shell or Start8.

And when the official Start Menu comes out, that add-on will likely break and cause headaches like it did when the 8.1 update brought back the Start button.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

And when the official Start Menu comes out, that add-on will likely break and cause headaches like it did when the 8.1 update brought back the Start button.

I had zero issues with it on any of the computers I have it installed on.

[Hack&Lube]

I'm trying to think of a place where I can stick a PowerEdge server in my tiny condo. The only place where I have any space is on top of my dryer in a closet. The giant motor and vibrations will surely destroy the server though!

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I'm trying to think of a place where I can stick a PowerEdge server in my tiny condo. The only place where I have any space is on top of my dryer in a closet. The giant motor and vibrations will surely destroy the server though!

I put mine in a Lack Rack. The I pile other stuff on top in my storage area

http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/00095036/

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Final specs:
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 Black Pearl w/ USB 3.0 ATX Mid Tower Silent PC Computer Case
Processor: Intel Core i5-4670 Haswell 3.4GHz LGA 1150 84W Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80646I54670
Motherboard: ASUS GRYPHON Z87 LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 uATX Intel Motherboard
Primary Storage: SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250LW 2.5" TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) With Notebook Bundle Kit
Secondary Storage: 2 x Seagate Hybrid Drive ST2000DX001 2TB MLC/8GB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s NCQ 3.5" Desktop SSHD
Video card: ASUS GTX760-DC2OC-2GD5 GeForce GTX 760 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Power supply: EVGA 600 B 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified 600W Active PFC ATX12V v2.31/EPS 12V v2.91 3 Year Warranty 100-B1-0600-KR Power ...

A few questions:

What are you using for CPU cooling?
How much memory are you going to start with?

And why did you go with a pair of hybrid drives for secondary storage? Isn't that be a bit overkill/redundant when you already have an SSHD for a boot drive?

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

A few questions:

What are you using for CPU cooling?
How much memory are you going to start with?

And why did you go with a pair of hybrid drives for secondary storage? Isn't that be a bit overkill/redundant when you already have an SSHD for a boot drive?

1. Stock Intel cooler. Might upgrade if I see the CPU temps rise to a level I'm not happy with.
2. Oops, thought I put that in there. 16 GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3-1866. I'll be upgrading to 32 GB at some point in the near future I think.

I picked hybrid drives for my secondary storage because my VHDs for my lab will likely live on the SSHDs, and I'll leave the SSD for base OS and application files. Plus they were a steal on Newegg.