Advice for VM Workstation/Server Build

[Lord Rumblegut]

Hello 

 

 

I was hoping to get some feedback on a couple of points from the community regarding an upcoming build of mine.  Specifically in regards to some unclear PSU requirements and RAM mfg's.

 

Hardware (Purchased and Looking at)

 

Currently Purchased Components:

Case: Corsair Air 540

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H

Drives: 2*2.5, 1*3.5 non SSD drives (Total 3)

Monitors: 2*24" Monitors, 1*46" TV/Monitor (Sometimes On)

 

List to Obtain (Looking At):

CPU: Intel i7 4770

CPU Cooler: Evo 212

Drives: 1 or 2 * 2.5 SSD, 1*3.5 HDD

RAM: 32Gb Dual Channel DDR3 1600 (Mfg?)

PSU: Need Help

Exp Cards: Second Network Card, Maybe a WiFi Card as well

 

Potential Future Upgrades (In order of likelyhood and implementation):

Additional Fans (If Current Case Design and Fans Don't Cool Optimally)

Fan Controller  

1 High-End Video Card  (Way in the future)

Sleeved Cables (Premade)

LED Lighting

 

Purpose of Build:

 

Ok, I know at first glance some might question the CPU/Mobo combintarion as the CPU is locked and it's an OC board.  I purchased this board for it's additional features over the H series and its asthetics.  The RAM may be seen as being a bit of overkill, but there is a reason for it.  

 

I am building this PC to support a large lab and home production server infrastructure on one machine utilizing VM Workstation with 3 nested ESXi hosts.  I will be running a fairly large number of virutal machines on this computer where 25% of the machines will be "always on" home production machines and the remaing 75% will be turned on during lab simulations, tests, or training scenarios where/as required.  Hence why I need the 4770 which I need for the quad cores and hyperthreading.  

 

When all machines are on I calculate my base RAM requirements for them to be 24Gb without the host operating system.  As I will want to maintain a reasonable experience on the PC itself I want the remaining 8Gb for the Windows OS and day to day computing.

 

The 2*24 monitors will be "always connected/on" as my main displays.  The 1*46 is meant to be a "NOC Command Center" type display, or to watch movies, training videos etc while I work out in the same room. I may not have it running/connected all the time.

 

My issues for the PSU and RAM begin here.

 

Question 1.

 

In regards to the RAM, does it really matter for this build what RAM MFG I go with are there ones that I should REALLY stay away from?  It's never going to be OC'd, it's a mostly lab machine, and for the most part it will only run business applications and server softwares.  So aside from financial investment, ultimate reliabilty and feature set isn't a key requirement. I may like to go with something that matches the case/board asthetics (White or Blue) but it's not incredibly important.  And I may like to keep the same MFG in the build as much as possible (IE.  Corsair) but again not terribly important and was thinking I may be able to reduce costs a little bit here by using cheaper RAM/Mfgs'

 

Question 2.

 

When I reviewed the above requirements on some website PSU calculators with the RAM, CPU, Fans, Exp cards, Drives, Integrated Video above (excluding potenial upgrades).  I pulled numbers at around 360-430w as base requirement.  Leading me to believe a 600w would be adequate for my needs.  My concern is if this shouldn't be higher given my high CPU/RAM load and intention on driving such a large monitor graphically with the onboard video.  Should I perhaps AIM for something along the lines of a 750w for buffer.  

 

I used to be a big PC/Console gamer so I might want to do this on it in the future, but I have a new baby so the only "quality" time I will get to spend on this PC is for work/study lab purposes.  Hence the "Potential Future" upgrades with graphics card being bottom of the list.  It may eventually happen, if it does I don't mind buying a bigger PSU if required.

 

Any advice, answers, comments you might have would be appreciated.  Thank you in advance for taking the time to read my post.

 

 

Regards,

 

Rumblegut

[macpro622776]

@Lord Rumblegut:

 

RAM manufacturer doesn't matter too much. Try and stick with the major brands though.

 

I'd say 750W would allow for simple expansion particularly in regards to storage. Speaking of which, what size HDD do you have now, and what are you intending to purchase in the future. Just like how you are allowing for large amounts of RAM to be allocated to each VM, how much are you going to be allocating for storage? I'd stock up on more HDD than SSD because they are VM's.

[Whaler_99]

IF looking at a big VM solution... get a different case. Problem with the 540 is lack of 3.5 drives for the VM's. Running VM's on SSD's is a waste....

 

But, as for RAM, just get a reliable brand, corsair, gskill, kingston, etc and you will be fine...

 

A 650 watt PSU should be plenty,,, Look at like a Corsair RM unit - very nice..

[Lord Rumblegut]

@Lord Rumblegut:

 

RAM manufacturer doesn't matter too much. Try and stick with the major brands though.

 

I'd say 750W would allow for simple expansion particularly in regards to storage. Speaking of which, what size HDD do you have now, and what are you intending to purchase in the future. Just like how you are allowing for large amounts of RAM to be allocated to each VM, how much are you going to be allocating for storage? I'd stock up on more HDD than SSD because they are VM's.

 

@macpro622776

 

Thanks for the reply!

 

Current drives are re-use from old machines just throwing in case to get some usage and get me up and running to support some certifications studies while I shop for bargins and until I purchase the drives I want.  They will be used where there is space after I get fully operational.

1*500gb  2.5 

1*250gb 2.5

1*250gb  3.5

 

Comments regarding future drives are included in the response to the post below...

 

 

IF looking at a big VM solution... get a different case. Problem with the 540 is lack of 3.5 drives for the VM's. Running VM's on SSD's is a waste....

 

But, as for RAM, just get a reliable brand, corsair, gskill, kingston, etc and you will be fine...

 

A 650 watt PSU should be plenty,,, Look at like a Corsair RM unit - very nice..

 

@Whaler_99

 

Thanks for the response!

 

You make a great point and I too had the exact same concern about the Air 540 3.5 drive bay capacity, but I love the look and air flow of the case and I did plan on some workarounds (see below)

 

 

@ Whaler_99 and Macpro622776

 

when fully operational I would be looking at the following

 

1 SSD 128 or 256 as OS and Application Drive

1 SSD 128 SSD for Critical VM C drives (These would be my "Production VM Machines" (File Server, 1 Win7 Pro VM , 1 XP-Pro VM, DC/AD, 3 x ESXi hosts)

2 * 3.5 2TB HDD in hot swap bays of Air 540 running in RAID 1 for File Server storage

1 * 3.5 3TB HDD in 5.25 bay of Air 540 for "Lab VM and non essential file storage (ISO's or Downloads)".  This Leaves 1 5.25" bay for Fan Controller if I ever decide I need it, will use external optical drive when required I don't like them mounted sideways like you need to do in Air 540

 

Reason for SSD on Mission Critical VM's C drives is that I would like to reduce impact on performance on those machines if I am trying to load up the ESXi hosts to study/test for fail over, high availability, vmotion, and clustering etc.  Or if I try to replicate a customers environment design within the ESXi hosts and need to replicate a number of machines at once running under varying loads.  Figure for $100 or so it's not much of a waste, but I do agree it's a little bit of overkill and may reconsider waiting to see if it's needed later.

 

All SSD Drives and the 2 production 3.5's would be backed up to a Qnap NAS.  I may backup the VM 3Tb storage as well, but I would rather see if I can support a few iterations of the backups on the primaries first. I can always quickly rebuild the non-prod vms if I need to.

[Whaler_99]

For the VM's - instead of SSD - I would go with say a WD SE or RE - expensive, but very reliable, very fast and lot more space then SSD. I have done some work and found my Hyper-V guests didn't seem to respond to being on a SSD as much as I thought they would. What made more performance improvements was setting static disk sizes versus dynamic, but then you need extra drive space so you can provision a large enough guest drive and not be expanding it every couple of days. I usually make workstations at least 40GB and servers in the range of 60GB+ depending on what I am running. 

 

And with the AIR 540 - lot of room in behind, my son has one. You could stack a few 3.5 drives back there, just be careful not to bump case. Or get some drive cage from another case and rivet/bolt it in...

[Ownster]

If your looking to save, instead of that 4770 get a Xeon E3-1230V3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116906 .

The only disadvantage is no integrated graphics.

[Lord Rumblegut]

If your looking to save, instead of that 4770 get a Xeon E3-1230V3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116906 .

The only disadvantage is no integrated graphics.

Thanks for the reply Ownster I considered this after your post as I could always RD to the box from my laptop to access and run the multi Mon from there until such a time as I got discreet cards but I ended up getting a pretty good deal on the 4770 this afternoon and so went with it.

[Lord Rumblegut]

For the VM's - instead of SSD - I would go with say a WD SE or RE - expensive, but very reliable, very fast and lot more space then SSD. I have done some work and found my Hyper-V guests didn't seem to respond to being on a SSD as much as I thought they would. What made more performance improvements was setting static disk sizes versus dynamic, but then you need extra drive space so you can provision a large enough guest drive and not be expanding it every couple of days. I usually make workstations at least 40GB and servers in the range of 60GB+ depending on what I am running. 

 

And with the AIR 540 - lot of room in behind, my son has one. You could stack a few 3.5 drives back there, just be careful not to bump case. Or get some drive cage from another case and rivet/bolt it in...

Thank you for sharing your experience with the vm vs ssd speed trade off. I am thinking I will pick up 2 of the re or Se for my file server raid component and try running a few vms from it and see how it is first if it saves me cash I'm all for it.

Checked out the RM650 I like it and will get either that or the 750 I think. ..

[WoodenMarker]

Checked out the RM650 I like it and will get either that or the 750 I think. ..

Overkill. Go with a rm450 or rm550 if you are going to really put a top of the line as-power-hungry-as-it-gets graphics card in there.

Psu calculator are for the most part highly inaccurate.

 

[macpro622776]

1 XP-Pro VM

 

Without going into a whole XP security debate, what is the point of having the XP VM?

 

Otherwise it sounds like you've got it under control. However like Whaler_99 said, the SSDs wouldn't be that useful in a VM. Also, I'd recommend using a 256 GB SSD for the DC, Win 7 etc. VMs just in case. It would be easier to have it all set up and not have to change it later.

[Lord Rumblegut]

Overkill. Go with a rm450 or rm550 if you are going to really put a top of the line as-power-hungry-as-it-gets graphics card in there.

Psu calculator are for the most part highly inaccurate.

 

Thanks WoodenMarker that was eye opening!

[Lord Rumblegut]

Without going into a whole XP security debate, what is the point of having the XP VM?

 

Otherwise it sounds like you've got it under control. However like Whaler_99 said, the SSDs wouldn't be that useful in a VM. Also, I'd recommend using a 256 GB SSD for the DC, Win 7 etc. VMs just in case. It would be easier to have it all set up and not have to change it later.

Some clients have legacy applications that don't play nice with Win7/8 or virtual pc, I like to have an xp machine available for such instances for testing/troubleshooting. Would rather virtualize and repurpose hardware. With it being in vm workstation it also gives me benefit of easier remote access + on/off capability without it having a NIC exposed to Internet. Can remote into host and run console or RDP from there.