I build Dell PE 2950's up to R910's as KVM servers in my day job, so I also wanted to setup something similar at home. I used an Asus M3A78-EM board, 8gb of ddr2 1066 ram, an AMD Phenom II X4 940, and several sata hard drives. I went with RHEL 6.1 for my hypervisor OS, but I'd recommend Fedora or CentOS instead in order to be able to install packages without requiring an entitlement.<br>
<br>I'd also recommend separating out your VM locations to a second disk unless you have a caching raid card and/or some sort of raid configured. The primary reason for that is to reduce i/o contention between your OS location and the virtual machines. Using a 32gb SSD for the OS and a 1tb sata 3 drive is a good compromise.<br>
<br>Also, I highly regret having used a mobo that only supports 8gb ram - 4 to 8gb is fine to start with, but once you reach your limits there, you'll find that you want to expand, but cannot. I'd recommend getting a mobo that supports 16gb or more, and only installing an initial 4 to 8 gb in the largest dimms that you can afford, leaving it open for easy expandability later on.<br>
<br>For KVM - I really don't like it's integration into dnsmasq, mainly in that if you want to use dnsmasq for other things as well, virt-manager will occasionally disagree with nice python errors when working with the network configurations of the hypervisor. Same thing for some uses of avahi (no idea why on that one).<br>
<br>Kaerka<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 4:30 AM, Jim Lynch <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ale_nospam@fayettedigital.com">ale_nospam@fayettedigital.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><div></div><div class="h5">On 08/17/2011 01:25 PM, JD wrote:<br>
> On 08/17/2011 12:09 PM, Boris Borisov wrote:<br>
>> I never done any installation of virtual servers and I want to start experimenting with the technology. Whats is the minimum CPU+MB that I can buy in Microcenter ( I work nearby ) for my needs. Bear in mind is going to be only for tests learning purpose not for production :)<br>
>><br>
>> Thank you for all suggestions !<br>
> Key things are:<br>
><br>
> * Lots of RAM - You need enough RAM for the host OS AND all the<br>
> clientOSes that will run at the same time. This may be 1GB if you are<br>
> cheap, but you'll be much happier with 6-16GB of RAM. I have 6GB and 8GB<br>
> machines with<br>
><br>
> * Virtualization support built into the CPU. Intel called it "VT-x".<br>
> Unfortunately about half the CPUs Intel makes do not support this still.<br>
> The only way to be certain is to look up a specific CPU model and<br>
> submodel number on the Intel web site. AMD calls this something<br>
> different. For awhile, AMD shipped 90% of their CPUs with this built-in.<br>
> Something happened and they don't anymore. Check the AMD website.<br>
><br>
> * CPUs with 2 or more Cores. I get good results from fast C2D CPUs, but<br>
> the Core i5-2500K seems like the sweet spot on capabilities and price.<br>
> I'm extremely impressed with a 3 yr old Core i5-750 still. AMD systems<br>
> with 4-6 cores probably work really well too. More cores probably means<br>
> more power required.<br>
><br>
> * You may want a CPU/motherboard with VT-d support. Look up what that<br>
> means, then get out your wallet.<br>
><br>
> * Disk storage for each VM. MS-Windows seems to need 20-30GB per VM.<br>
> Ultimate wants 45GB. Linux distros use much less, from 50MB for<br>
> TinyCore to 10GB for a full Ubuntu desktop install with every bell and<br>
> whistle possible. I usually give each server VM 4GB of storage and my<br>
> desktop VM just outgrew a 10GB allocation after 3 yrs of daily use.<br>
><br>
> There are different types of virtualization - desktop and servers.<br>
> Server virtualization hardware can be extremely picky, so if that's<br>
> really what you want to learn, you would be well served by using the<br>
> VMware ESX Hardware Compatibility List <a href="http://www.vmware.com/go/hcl" target="_blank">http://www.vmware.com/go/hcl</a> to<br>
> select hardware. I haven't looked in a while, but there was a time when<br>
> none of my systems could load ESXi due to the disk controller and<br>
> networking chipsets. It is THAT picky.<br>
><br>
> For server-based virtualization, forget about the graphics card. It<br>
> doesn't matter beyond being able to show an 80x25 text console.<br>
><br>
> Desktop virtualization is a little more forgiving, but don't expect to<br>
> play Windows games under a VM and be happy. Don't expect hardware<br>
> passthru to work very well. Graphics performance is fine for office<br>
> productivity apps, not so good for gaming or video editing.<br>
><br>
> I'll be at the ALE-central meeting tomorrow night. Find me if you'd like<br>
> to discuss more.<br>
><br>
</div></div>> \<br>
OpenVZ doesn't dedicate any ram to a container. I currently have 10<br>
containers running on a 2 Gb system quite happily. Granted they aren't<br>
too busy but they are all up and most of them are serving web pages,<br>
some doing compiles some are running mysql, etc. Htop shows it's only<br>
using 1 Gb. If you need a lot of guests and want them to run as<br>
efficiently as possible. OpenVZ is your best choice. I suspect lxc will<br>
give you similar results but I've not had any experience. The<br>
documentation is a bit lacking as far as I can tell.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
Jim<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><br>
Kaerka Phillips<br>
<a href="mailto:kbphillips80@gmail.com" target="_blank">kbphillips80@gmail.com</a><br>