Building a new desktop +VM lab

[Rock-kun]

As per title. The main operating systems will be a mix of Fedora 23 and OpenSUSE 42.1, both of which will be cloning git and svn repostories of well-known OSS applications like Libreoffice, Firefox, Chromium, etc for making personalized builds.

In addition, a type 2 hypervisor *coughVirtualBox* will be running the following virtual machines on top of the main operating system:

• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Hyper-V Server 2012 R2
• Windows 7 x64 (EFI mode)
• Windows 8.1 x64 (EFI mode)
• CentOS (EFI mode)
• Debian (EFI mode)

The Debian VM will be acting as a file server and CentOS will be hosting the file server backups using rsync.

For this, I have the following build in mind (prices from PC Themes):
AsRock H170M – ITX/AC + i7-6700 - S$658.00
Kingston 8GB DDR4 x2 - S$84.00 x 2 = S$168
Toshiba 4TB HDD x3 (set up in RAID 5)- S$191.00 x 3 = S$573
CM 110 chassis - S$70.00
FSP 550W - S$68.00
Corsair 120mm fan (advise me on whether SP or AF?) - S$22.00
Total= $1559

The price tag is a little on the high side though, are there any components I can chop or scrimp on a little to bring down the overall cost?

**This is not a 24/7 machine.

 

[Rock-kun]

bump

10 char

 

[localITguy]

As per title. The main operating systems will be a mix of Fedora 23 and OpenSUSE 42.1, both of which will be cloning git and svn repostories of well-known OSS applications like Libreoffice, Firefox, Chromium, etc for making personalized builds.

In addition, a type 2 hypervisor *coughVirtualBox* will be running the following virtual machines on top of the main operating system:

• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Hyper-V Server 2012 R2
• Windows 7 x64 (EFI mode)
• Windows 8.1 x64 (EFI mode)
• CentOS (EFI mode)
• Debian (EFI mode)

The Debian VM will be acting as a file server and CentOS will be hosting the file server backups using rsync.

For this, I have the following build in mind (prices from PC Themes):
AsRock H170M – ITX/AC + i7-6700 - S$658.00
Kingston 8GB DDR4 x2 - S$84.00 x 2 = S$168
Toshiba 4TB HDD x3 (set up in RAID 5)- S$191.00 x 3 = S$573
CM 110 chassis - S$70.00
FSP 550W - S$68.00
Corsair 120mm fan (advise me on whether SP or AF?) - S$22.00
Total= $1559

The price tag is a little on the high side though, are there any components I can chop or scrimp on a little to bring down the overall cost?

**This is not a 24/7 machine.

why not consider KVM/Xen-PV it will better use your resource instead of virtualbox. just saying

 

[Rock-kun]

why not consider KVM/Xen-PV it will better use your resource instead of virtualbox. just saying

Because no experience with KVM and QEMU or Xen-PV. Also, I tend to roll my own kernels, but it's mostly just based of the .config file provided by the bundled kernel (i mostly only go in to enable all the staging drivers in newer kernels since most bundled kernels don't do so) so I'm not sure if my typical builds contain the bits required for proper KVM or Xen virtualization

Also, I don't think KVM or Xen-PV is capable of providing an EFI base for VMs? I know for a fact that VirtualBox can do so; it uses TianoCore.

Originally planned to dedicate the entire system to either Hyper-V 2012 R2 or Citrix XenServer...but no money to build up a second desktop with the same specifications.

 

[gld998]

As per title. The main operating systems will be a mix of Fedora 23 and OpenSUSE 42.1, both of which will be cloning git and svn repostories of well-known OSS applications like Libreoffice, Firefox, Chromium, etc for making personalized builds.

In addition, a type 2 hypervisor *coughVirtualBox* will be running the following virtual machines on top of the main operating system:

• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Hyper-V Server 2012 R2
• Windows 7 x64 (EFI mode)
• Windows 8.1 x64 (EFI mode)
• CentOS (EFI mode)
• Debian (EFI mode)

The Debian VM will be acting as a file server and CentOS will be hosting the file server backups using rsync.

For this, I have the following build in mind (prices from PC Themes):
AsRock H170M – ITX/AC + i7-6700 - S$658.00
Kingston 8GB DDR4 x2 - S$84.00 x 2 = S$168
Toshiba 4TB HDD x3 (set up in RAID 5)- S$191.00 x 3 = S$573
CM 110 chassis - S$70.00
FSP 550W - S$68.00
Corsair 120mm fan (advise me on whether SP or AF?) - S$22.00
Total= $1559

The price tag is a little on the high side though, are there any components I can chop or scrimp on a little to bring down the overall cost?

**This is not a 24/7 machine.

Get X99 with 8 dimms, RAM is very important. You can go 64Gb RAM instead of 16Gb. ATX build rah... ITX is hot if u use CM110. Good Luck.

I using X79 btw running ESXi 6.

 

[gld998]

why not consider KVM/Xen-PV it will better use your resource instead of virtualbox. just saying

Might as well using CentOS LibVirt or Virtual Manager then train on RHEL 7..

 

[Noroto]

If u r running applications on Linux, learn about Docker.

 

[Op_Valkyrie]

If u r running applications on Linux, learn about Docker.

Use rocket Liao easier to manage and run apps IMO... Even coreOS also adapt to rocket than docker though both still consider LXC.