David Stephen wrote:
I am looking to purchase bits for a reasonably grunty box which will
be m home server and my sand box. I intend to install Ubuntu (64bit),
Xen (VM monitor) and then have several VMs providing:
- File print server (apache/postgres)
- Web server
- Firewalling
Currently I am looking at:
- Asusteck P5QL-PRO motherboard
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU
- NVidia 8400GS 256MB PCI-E video card
- 4 x 2GB Kingston ValueRAM KVR800D2N5K2
I have read that there are/were problems with Ubuntu/Quad core
processors and some NVidia graphics cards. Trawling round the net
hasn't been terribly enlightning. I don't need high performing
graphics.
More detail please - how many VMs, what OSs, how much RAM to allocate,
and how busy will each VM be ?
File/Print/web serving and basic firewalling don't need much CPU -
anything new will basically idle, unless you're serving for hundreds of
clients.
Lots of disk would be good, and since you're building from scratch look
at software raid1 or raid5 for all your stuff. I have 2x200GB in a raid
1 for my important stuff and a separate 80GB drive for downloads and
"temp store" Go SATA drives if course.
Asus is a good brand of motherboard - excellent choice there.
You say "no need for high perf graphics" so can you just stick with the
on-board VGA? They're not as bad as they used to be. Otherwise a $50
PCIE card would be perfect. Go for one without an active fan, but with
twin connectors so you can do multihead. Expect to use the binary
nvidia modules if you want full functionality.
Power supply - get a decent one... I like enermax and seventeam.
It might pay to add a couple of spare physical NICs too - That way you
can do funky VM tricks like bridging to a physical interface.
We run a dual quad core IBM x3400 with 7 GB ram as a xen host. Works
great :) Shame its not a rack.
--
Craig Falconer
