Building a Virtual Server for the House

By Daniel Miessler on March 17th, 2008: Tagged as Geek

[Edit: So I think I've decided to go the ultra-cheap route instead of the ultra-über route. I think I'm going to throw these VMs on one of my old custom servers on VMware Server instead of on a new server and ESX. Still not sure, but this just feels more right. Besides, with the country the way it is I might need the extra money for ammo and camping gear.]

So I’m rebuilding my home network and trying to decide what to use as my main virtual server (hardware wise). I think I’ve decided to purchase a 1U server. I’ve considered going with a really cheap option (like under $500) and have been scared away by reliability/support concerns. Of course, at that price so what if it fails? Meh…

The one thing I keep coming back to is wanting the box to run for years and years, with as few scale or reliability issues as possible. I think I’m going to end up getting another DELL 1950 like the one that runs this site. I’ve been very happy with it.

Hermes (this server’s name) is a DELL 1950 with two dual-core Xeons and 4GB of RAM. He’s done well for me and the one I’m looking at now is also a DELL 1950, but is called a 1950 III. This guy I just configured has two quad-core Xeons and 8GB of RAM. That’s sick. And the cost is equally nice — less than $2,400. And that’s including dual power supplies, a dual-port Intel 1000 network card and a couple of 146GB, 15K RPM SAS drives in RAID 1.

Not bad at all. I figure I can build a pretty solid virtual server base on that – an AD server, an Exchange box, one or two Linux and/or BSD servers, and then some room to play with transient stuff using various OSs. And the speed would never be a question — especially running on ESX.

But is it complete overkill? Should I skimp and go with a wimpy version of the same box, without the RAID and drives and RAM for like $1,200? I just don’t want to kick myself later for not getting as much box as I should have — especially at this price when I don’t expect to buy another home server for quite a while. Going from 4GB to 8GB of RAM was only like $120. But I also don’t want to have to pay off another server if I can avoid it.

Anyway, I’m talking out loud. Any thoughts would be appreciated…:

  • http://adam.younglogic.com/ Adam

    Raid in general will increase your failure rate, just provide a way to recover from it. I would recommend straight duplication only, or even skip raid altogether and just have a decent backup strategy.

    Also, since you are runing this at home, look at power consumption. Electricity ain’t cheap, especially in the Bay Area. A burly server will mean a burly electricity bill.

    The real question is, what is the expected load of the servers? Once you have that figured out, the rest is arithmatic.

  • http://adam.younglogic.com Adam

    Raid in general will increase your failure rate, just provide a way to recover from it. I would recommend straight duplication only, or even skip raid altogether and just have a decent backup strategy.

    Also, since you are runing this at home, look at power consumption. Electricity ain’t cheap, especially in the Bay Area. A burly server will mean a burly electricity bill.

    The real question is, what is the expected load of the servers? Once you have that figured out, the rest is arithmatic.

  • Eamon

    What about noise? I had a Dell 1650 in my home office for a while and it sounded like a Cessna taking off. I couldn’t keep it on even with the door to my home office closed, it was so irritating.

    I was thinking about a powerful Desktop as a VM server.

    Where do you keep your servers to avoid the sound issues?

  • Eamon

    What about noise? I had a Dell 1650 in my home office for a while and it sounded like a Cessna taking off. I couldn’t keep it on even with the door to my home office closed, it was so irritating.

    I was thinking about a powerful Desktop as a VM server.

    Where do you keep your servers to avoid the sound issues?

  • http://dmiessler.com/ Daniel Miessler

    I was going to put this one in my closet, with a fan pointed in there. But now I’m reconsidering the whole thing. I may just go the super-cheap route instead and put it on a regular “desktop” server that I built a long time ago — using VMware Server.

    I’m thinking that once the systems are up and running I’m not going to see a real difference anyway. I’m not sure…still trying to decide…

  • http://dmiessler.com Daniel Miessler

    I was going to put this one in my closet, with a fan pointed in there. But now I’m reconsidering the whole thing. I may just go the super-cheap route instead and put it on a regular “desktop” server that I built a long time ago — using VMware Server.

    I’m thinking that once the systems are up and running I’m not going to see a real difference anyway. I’m not sure…still trying to decide…

  • http://wicked-styles.com/bitsandpieces/ Doc Rice

    I use an older dual-CPU AMD-based system for my VMs (I run a few Server 2003s and a couple of BSDs on VMware Server 1.0, which itself is running on top of 2003). In my experience, loads of processing power really isn’t mandatory unless each of these machines are crunching numbers simultaneously (or booting all at once). Memory requirements – well, that one’s obvious.

    Disk utilization is my common bottleneck. Windows has a lot of read / write operations going on all the time, especially when AV is installed.

    That said, if you’re planning on deploying 2008, well, that’s gonna up your hardware requirements a bit, even with the Server Core option. When I was testing Server 2008 (beta) on a Dell 2950 with two sets of RAID10 (dual Xeons, 8 GB of memory), those VMs ran pretty slow while XP and 2003 VMs were snappy (I ran about 10 VMs on this box). Then again, perhaps that version of ESX wasn’t calibrated for it.

    Noise is definitely another consideration. I thought about getting a dedicated rack-mount machine as well for home, but I can’t put it in the garage or closet (no cooling in my case) and it’s just too much noise in my office.

    In the end, I’d consider what kind of average load these VMs will run and what your expected responsiveness is. I’m assuming this is just for you, not for public services.

  • http://wicked-styles.com/bitsandpieces/ Doc Rice

    I use an older dual-CPU AMD-based system for my VMs (I run a few Server 2003s and a couple of BSDs on VMware Server 1.0, which itself is running on top of 2003). In my experience, loads of processing power really isn’t mandatory unless each of these machines are crunching numbers simultaneously (or booting all at once). Memory requirements – well, that one’s obvious.

    Disk utilization is my common bottleneck. Windows has a lot of read / write operations going on all the time, especially when AV is installed.

    That said, if you’re planning on deploying 2008, well, that’s gonna up your hardware requirements a bit, even with the Server Core option. When I was testing Server 2008 (beta) on a Dell 2950 with two sets of RAID10 (dual Xeons, 8 GB of memory), those VMs ran pretty slow while XP and 2003 VMs were snappy (I ran about 10 VMs on this box). Then again, perhaps that version of ESX wasn’t calibrated for it.

    Noise is definitely another consideration. I thought about getting a dedicated rack-mount machine as well for home, but I can’t put it in the garage or closet (no cooling in my case) and it’s just too much noise in my office.

    In the end, I’d consider what kind of average load these VMs will run and what your expected responsiveness is. I’m assuming this is just for you, not for public services.


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