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Installing virtualized EBS at home (#2)

  • Artigo

[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Jim Holtzman]  

Continuing the saga of virtualizing EBS at home.

Step 1: Set a budget for dating EBS. This is coming out of my pocket so I set a hard limit of $2000. Done.

Step 2: Determine hardware requirements. I read the following:

I'm going to aim for the following: 16GB RAM, 4 fast hard drives (10k RPM), two quad-core procs (64-bit, of course), two NICS. Ambitious. Let's see what I find.

Pre-built server
I looked at several vendors and quickly determined it was not possible to meet budget with a pre-built machine. Not even close. Maybe this date is going nowhere fast.

DIY server
A do-it-yourself server just might keep things moving. I've built desktops before. Not servers. I'll give it a shot. Here's my list of hardware priced out:

  • Server case: $174 - with 650-Watt power supply.
  • Motherboard: $290 - supports dual quad-core procs, SAS drives, 2 NICS, maximum 32GB RAM.
  • Quad-core Processor: $227 x 2 = $454.
  • RAM: $360 - 16 GB (2 x 2GB) x 4.
  • Hard drives: $180 x 4 = $720 - 147GB, 15K RPM, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS).
  • Video card: $25 - cheapest I could find. Who needs fancy video on a server? Almost forgot to order until I reviewed the motherboard specs and found no built-in video. Lucky catch.
  • DVD RW drive: $22 - read-write in-case I need to write something quickly to be available via the virtual DVD.
  • Floppy drive: $7 - just in case I need it for bios flash or virtual machine purposes. Probably a waste of money.
  • Shipping: $27.

Total: $2,079 - over budget. Cut out the second quad-core proc.

New total: $1,852. The date is progressing.

I placed the order. Hope I didn't forget something important. You'll let me know, right?

Note: I'm not meeting all the hardware requirements suggested by the EBS team. I don't have a RAID set. I don't have a second processor. Consider this a test environment setup.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    [ Today's post comes to us courtesy of Jim Holtzman] Continuing the saga of virtualizing EBS at home.

  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2009
    Definitely looking forward to following what you encounter, we are running a virtualized EBS solution here in our production environment and am looking forward to seeing what you encounter and lending a hand if necessary!

  • Anonymous
    February 11, 2009
    Just wanted to mention that you will need three NICs. You have a good amount of RAM. Would be better to use SATA and spend on CPU and RAM for this virutalized environment. A couple of more disks would be helpful.

  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2009
    Where did you pick up 147GB 15K SAS drives for $180 each?  That's a pretty good deal. I just picked up a Dell PowerEdge 2900III with dual Intel Zeon 5430s, 16GB memory, PERC 6i raid, dual GB nics, and redundant power for about the same price, but it had 3 80GB SATA drives in it.