Re: [PLUG] cheapass VM host platform?

[Lee Marzke <lee@marzke.net>]

linc wrote:
> Ron Mansolino wrote:
>   
>> I'm thinking about upgrading on of my boxes at home, and I think I'd 
>> like to setup a VM host.
>> Mostly just to play with, but it'd be nice to back up my cloud-thingy 
>> and experiment with/on.
>> I'm not interested in cherry-picking a bunch of stuff to put together, 
>> I'd rather just snipe something off of eBay and be done with it.
>> what would you suggest (for example, a SOHO client, or for your lab)?
>> thx
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> ___________________________________________________________________________
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>>     
>
> Well, what I did was go to geeks.com and picked up an inexpensive server 
> (actually I bought 2 Appro 1U servers).  Right now they have a decent 
> looking one for $130 
> http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=DL140-3R&cat=SYS.  Slap Linux 
> and VMWare server on there and there you have it.  It'll take you an 
> hour to get going maybe and works great here, in fact I run my entire 
> infrastructure on VMs.  You can even run VMWare converter to convert 
> existing hardware to VMs.
>
>   
Just remember if you take a marginal box that is OK for one server
and try to run  3 or more VM's  you may not be happy with the performance.

If you want to run more than a few VM's you will quickly find
you wish you had more RAM.  So at least get a machine
that can hold lots of RAM.

You also want several 1GB Ethernet ports,  since the VM's will
be sharing these ports.

If your going the VMware route,  you really should run the free ESXi
server ( which installs on bare hw ) and is more efficient at RAM use than
the free Vmware Server.  If your learning,  you can also get 60 days
free trial of Vsphere management server.

My slides from PLUG north on Virtulization  and ESX are here
if you would like to see ESXi and Vsphere screens.

http://plug.4aero.com/Members/lmarzke/plug_virtualization

However ESXi runs on limited hardware,  so
you should look here to find compatible systems:

http://ultimatewhitebox.com/systems
http://www.vm-help.com//esx40i/esx40_whitebox_HCL.php

Also note that ESXi only runs on 64 bit systems.


I sniped a SuperMicro 1U server from Ebay for this:

Dual CPU  (Dual-core Optron)
H8DSP-I Motherboard
2x 1GB Ethernet
4x 320GB SATA HD
12GB DDR SDRAM

This host is running about a half dozen VM's  ( web servers,  Plone, Tomcat
SqueezeBox music server)  mostly on Linux and 1 or 2 Windows VM's
( all guests are 32 bit )

Lee




___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug