Re: VM Host Hardware Recommendations.

Hi Garth,

You're leaving the conditions a bit open here.  That is, only you can
know how heavily taxed a system will be.  How much CPU you will use, how
much I/O (disk, network) bandwidth.

You haven't really filled that information in for us.  For example, will
10 people, 100 people, or one person, be using that initial development
environment?

However, that said, if you want to go cheap.. then just go to a place
like PC Cyber and build your own PC.  Stick with a quality brand like
ASUS, and make sure the motherboard has Intel chipsets for FSB, etc.
You'll pay 20% more, but that 20% is well worth what you get.

Don't be swayed with comments about bargain brand motherboards and
things like VIA chipsets.  ASUS, while imperfect like every other
entity on the planet, has built a quality name for itself, and that
extra pricing does show up in build quality.

Intel is intel.  

Over the years I've had so many issues with VIA, SiS and other chipsets
-- that comparatively, Intel is absolutely godlike.

Don't even get me started on NICs.

Make sure you have lots of ram.  Ram is relatively cheap, and nothing
will kill your day, like a machine swapping to death.  If you don't want
to spend too much on ram now, make sure to get large sized DIMMs, so
you'd have plenty of free space to use later.

That is, don't fill all your ram slots.

Buy a core for each VM, since we have no other metric to measure usage.
If you think you'll only be using a max of 4 VMs, a quad-core i5 or i7 is
probably just fine -- and the best price point versus power.

However, again -- it is very hard to know what you are going to need,
without have a very detailed idea of what CPU / ram / i/o usage you will
have.  Heck, Garth, you may be fine with a 5 year old CPU, depending on
how you use your VMs.



On Sat, 23 Jul 2011 11:30:48 -0400
Garth Boyd <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I do _not_ know that latest and greatest and esoteric things about
> hardware. So I am looking for advice on building a VM host.
> 
> The host, and guest OSes would be linux. The role of the guest OSes
> would be Plone based python development. In some cases the guest OSes
> would be running images for training purposes. So a running image would
> be production and other images would be test and development.
> 
> What would your opinion be for what is required today for a decent VM
> host without breaking the bank (or perhaps bottom dollar)?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> - Garth
> -- 
> OCLUG general discussion list
> [email protected]
> http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/oclug
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