Building a computer for virtual machines
I am looking at what components I’d like in a computer for running virtual machines. I have not yet made a definitive choice what virtualization product I will use but it is either VMWare ESXi or Citrix XenServer – the choice is primarily based on which of them will work on the computer (as it is a DIY project built from components the vendor hardware support documents are not very useful) followed by what products our sales people in the company hear most of (it is meant to be a competence enhancing project too).
Anyway, this is what I’ve put in the shopping cart right now:
- GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DQ6 S-775 ATX
- INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q9550 2.8GHZ 12MB 1333MHZ S-775
- OCZ DDR2 GOLD XTC 16GB PC2-6400 (4X4GB)
- ASUS RADEON HD3450 256MB GDDR2 PCI-E VGA/DVI/HDMI LP
- 2 x WESTERN DIGITAL CAVIAR GREEN 1TB SATA/300 32MB
- SAMSUNG DVD-ROM 16X/48X INTERN IDE BULK (Need it to install the virtualization product, probably the only time it is ever used…)
- ACE RAW DEAL+ 620W ATX
- COOLER MASTER MIDITOWER CM STORM SNIPER ATX
If the virtualization products supports the onboard RAID then I will add some more drives (Not sure if I should run RAID 5 or RAID 1+0 in that case). I have also an idea of running the core OS from a Compact Flash [CF] using a SATA/CF adapter, but I am not sure about that yet.
If you have any experience of running either virtualization product on similar hardware do leave a comment with your feedback.
June 18th, 2009 at 18:40
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June 25th, 2009 at 22:12
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