[SERVER] Buy an old rackmount server or build something cheap?

bueller · 29th August 2012, 5:41 PM

Now that I've passed all my certificates for W7 I'm looking at doing the Server 2008 exams. Have seen some cheap rack servers going on eBay but I'm not sure if I'd just be better off building something on the cheap.

Would say I'll be running Server 2008 and 3-4 Windows 7 VM's, what does everyone think I'll need hardware wise? Have run a VM under W7 with a dual core and 4GB of ram and it was slow as molasses, looking to avoid that if possible.

DavidRa · 29th August 2012, 5:43 PM

VirtualBox with a Core i3 and 16GB of cheap RAM. Get more than one disk, or a good SSD to run the VMs and you should be fine (I can run 10 VMs happily on a notebook with 16GB and a Sandisk Extreme SSD).

mjunek · 29th August 2012, 5:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidRa

VirtualBox with a Core i3 and 16GB of cheap RAM. Get more than one disk, or a good SSD to run the VMs and you should be fine (I can run 10 VMs happily on a notebook with 16GB and a Sandisk Extreme SSD).

+1 for this idea. Much easier, quieter and cheaper than a dedicated server.

SSD may not be absolutely necessary, I have around 20 VM's here in the office running of a 4x 1TB raid 5 over 1GBit iSCSI
For testing and development purposes it's well and truly fast enough. A win2k3 or 2k8 box barely hits 400Mbit when booting.

bueller · 29th August 2012, 6:18 PM

Cheers for the advice! Thinking about it this might be a good time to upgrade my own machine, if I pulled out the FX4100 and mobo from my system do you think they'd suffice? Seems like the FX4100 will beat an i3 in most benchmarks that I've seen and then I'll be able to upgrade my machine to an i5 2500k.

Also have a 74GB Velociraptor, if I got another one of those and had them in RAID 0 do you think that would suffice storage wise?

mjunek · 29th August 2012, 6:35 PM

Someone else can comment on the CPU but make sure it has VT-x extensions and you are running an x64 base OS.

IMO 2x Raptors in R0 would be sufficient for the smallish load you'll have on them

29th August 2012, 5:41 PM	#1
bueller Member Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Perth Posts: 2,008	Buy an old rackmount server or build something cheap? Now that I've passed all my certificates for W7 I'm looking at doing the Server 2008 exams. Have seen some cheap rack servers going on eBay but I'm not sure if I'd just be better off building something on the cheap. Would say I'll be running Server 2008 and 3-4 Windows 7 VM's, what does everyone think I'll need hardware wise? Have run a VM under W7 with a dual core and 4GB of ram and it was slow as molasses, looking to avoid that if possible. __________________ PERTH: Chasing old AT and PS/2 keyboards for parts, let me know what you've got!

29th August 2012, 5:43 PM	#2
DavidRa Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Sydney Posts: 2,379	VirtualBox with a Core i3 and 16GB of cheap RAM. Get more than one disk, or a good SSD to run the VMs and you should be fine (I can run 10 VMs happily on a notebook with 16GB and a Sandisk Extreme SSD). __________________ Folding as djr 45,000 Club @ 4,000,000 Points Milestone Earlier: Folding as djr(at)wamoz(dot)com 20,000 Club @ 250,000 Points Milestone Blogging at http://www.pdconsec.net/blogs/davidr/

29th August 2012, 6:18 PM	#4
bueller Member Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Perth Posts: 2,008	Cheers for the advice! Thinking about it this might be a good time to upgrade my own machine, if I pulled out the FX4100 and mobo from my system do you think they'd suffice? Seems like the FX4100 will beat an i3 in most benchmarks that I've seen and then I'll be able to upgrade my machine to an i5 2500k. Also have a 74GB Velociraptor, if I got another one of those and had them in RAID 0 do you think that would suffice storage wise? __________________ PERTH: Chasing old AT and PS/2 keyboards for parts, let me know what you've got!

29th August 2012, 6:35 PM	#5
mjunek Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Northmead, Sydney Posts: 611	Someone else can comment on the CPU but make sure it has VT-x extensions and you are running an x64 base OS. IMO 2x Raptors in R0 would be sufficient for the smallish load you'll have on them __________________ ---> Skymaster <--- Successful Trade List Main Rig: Q6600 \| GA-P35-DS3P \| 8GB PC6400 \| GTX480 768MB \| 8x 300GB R10 15k SAS \| HP P400 Server: Opteron 175 \| NF4 SLI-DR \| 2GB PC3200 \| FX5200 PCI \| 4x 1T R5 \| 4x 1.5T R5 \| 2x HP P400