mitx virtualization server

[Atomicnerd64]

I want to make an itx virtualization server so I can put it on a shelf. what do you guys recommend? the case I'll use is the CM elite 110. dual onboard nics would be good but definitely not a must. other than that, I don't know if I want an i3 or an i5 because I don't know how much difference there is between 2C/4T and 4C/4T. I won't be running a ton of VMs so I don't know if I need 8gigs of ram or 16...maybe start with an 8gig stick and then go from there? also please suggest storage. I'll be running some basic wordpress servers and minecraft servers. one of the vms will also be a print server so I think I have a basic workload. I know it's a lot and I appreciate all the suggestions. looking for something relatively cheap. 

[Eniqmatic]

What's the budget?

 

I would recommend the ASRock Rack E3C226D2I as a fairly cheap and feature rich server motherboard, and pair it with a nice cheap Xeon. It has many 6 SATA ports for storage, 2 on board NICS and an IPMI port. 

[tlink]

how many minecraft servers? those require quite a bit of ram and computing power to be run smoothly.

[SCHISCHKA]

I have an 8 core AMD on my desktop. It is not a dedicated VM server. I run three VMs; 2 cores on each; 4GB RAM each. What I'm doing is just spreading my resources and leaving some for the host so my VMs aren't swapping. Because you're using Intel I think each VM would work on one core each, possibly two for the minecraft. look up the RAM requirements for minecraft server, wordpress+ whatever else your running and multiply by 4/3, should give you 25% free ram on each VM. Don't forget to leave some ram and CPU for the host.

 

Use SSD for storage. you need that random access speed.

 

Prefer i5 over i3 because more cache. for clock speed; i think mincreaft would be you biggest requirement so pick one that matches its requirements, but don't go too far over because power consumption

[Atomicnerd64]

26 minutes ago, Eniqmatic said:

What's the budget?

 

I would recommend the ASRock Rack E3C226D2I as a fairly cheap and feature rich server motherboard, and pair it with a nice cheap Xeon. It has many 6 SATA ports for storage, 2 on board NICS and an IPMI port. 

not available in greece already looked at it. budget is 600 at most. but i want as cheap as possible

[Atomicnerd64]

20 minutes ago, tlink said:

how many minecraft servers? those require quite a bit of ram and computing power to be run smoothly.

2

[Atomicnerd64]

18 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

I have an 8 core AMD on my desktop. It is not a dedicated VM server. I run three VMs; 2 cores on each; 4GB RAM each. What I'm doing is just spreading my resources and leaving some for the host so my VMs aren't swapping. Because you're using Intel I think each VM would work on one core each, possibly two for the minecraft. look up the RAM requirements for minecraft server, wordpress+ whatever else your running and multiply by 4/3, should give you 25% free ram on each VM. Don't forget to leave some ram and CPU for the host.

 

Use SSD for storage. you need that random access speed.

 

Prefer i5 over i3 because more cache. for clock speed; i think mincreaft would be you biggest requirement so pick one that matches its requirements, but don't go too far over because power consumption

wont ssds wear out faster than hdds?

[SCHISCHKA]

1 minute ago, Atomicnerd64 said:

wont ssds wear out faster than hdds?

yes but i buy the ones with 5 year warranty. Iv just upgraded my intel SSD to Samsung after 5 years; not because its worn out but because it ran out of space. I also don't put my swap partitions on the SSD so thats prob helped. I now use my old SSD as swap because the noise of the HDDs are annoying

[Atomicnerd64]

Just now, SCHISCHKA said:

yes but i buy the ones with 5 year warranty. Iv just upgraded my intel SSD to Samsung after 5 years; not because its worn out but because it ran out of space. I also don't put my swap partitions on the SSD so thats prob helped. I now use my old SSD as swap because the noise of the HDDs are annoying

oh okay, i see.. i still think hdds of 1-2 tbs are my best option because of money constrains 

[SLAYR]

37 minutes ago, Atomicnerd64 said:

I want to make an itx virtualization server so I can put it on a shelf. what do you guys recommend? the case I'll use is the CM elite 110. dual onboard nics would be good but definitely not a must. other than that, I don't know if I want an i3 or an i5 because I don't know how much difference there is between 2C/4T and 4C/4T. I won't be running a ton of VMs so I don't know if I need 8gigs of ram or 16...maybe start with an 8gig stick and then go from there? also please suggest storage. I'll be running some basic wordpress servers and minecraft servers. one of the vms will also be a print server so I think I have a basic workload. I know it's a lot and I appreciate all the suggestions. looking for something relatively cheap. 

If you want the cheap option, get a used dual lga 1366 server, and get some ddr3 rdimms for really cheap used. It will be loud, use a bit of power, and a bit big though.

 

For the minecraft servers you probabbly want 8gb of ram for each one, and you need more ram for the restof the vms so you would be looking at a (2x16)kit minimum for an itx setup. Also you can't run that many vms even on an i5 if you need them all at once, if you dedicate one core for the hypervisor, another for the print server, and then a few wordpress servers then you are out of cores and while you can run the minecraft servers on the same cores it wouldn't be ideal, I would suggest 8 threads minimum.

 

So either go for an i7, or a cheap dual socket system like an old 1366 server.

X99 is also an option, but will be pretty expensive.

[Atomicnerd64]

Just now, SLAYR said:

If you want the cheap option, get a used dual lga 1366 server, and get some ddr3 rdimms for really cheap used. It will be loud, use a bit of power, and a bit big though.

 

For the minecraft servers you probabbly want 8gb of ram for each one, and you need more ram for the restof the vms so you would be looking at a (2x16)kit minimum for an itx setup. Also you can't run that many vms even on an i5 if you need them all at once, if you dedicate one core for the hypervisor, another for the print server, and then a few wordpress servers then you are out of cores and while you can run the minecraft servers on the same cores it wouldn't be ideal, I would suggest 8 threads minimum.

 

So either go for an i7, or a cheap dual socket system like an old 1366 server.

X99 is also an option, but will be pretty expensive.

I have ran an entire mc server on a bare metal ubuntu desktop install and the system had just a pentium and 4 gigs of ram. i7 is probably the best option

[SCHISCHKA]

http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Server/Requirements/Dedicated

 

Intel Core-Based CPUs or AMD K8-Based CPUs at 3.6GHz or higher

6GB RAM

35GB storage

[SLAYR]

4 minutes ago, Atomicnerd64 said:

I have ran an entire mc server on a bare metal ubuntu desktop install and the system had just a pentium and 4 gigs of ram. i7 is probably the best option

If you are running a low amount of people and no mods 4gb may be fine, but with lots of mods, and people you will chug though ram.

[Atomicnerd64]

Just now, SCHISCHKA said:

http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Server/Requirements/Dedicated

 

Intel Core-Based CPUs or AMD K8-Based CPUs at 3.6GHz or higher

6GB RAM

35GB storage

probably going to go with an i7 and a big hdd and start with a 16gb ram stick

[Atomicnerd64]

1 minute ago, SLAYR said:

If you are running a low amount of people and no mods 4gb may be fine, but with lots of mods, and people you will chug though ram.

I know that. I am running 1 vanilla server and 1 spigot server at all times and I sometimes run another vanilla one. the spigot one has some mods but there aren't a lot of people on any server. 

[SCHISCHKA]

39 minutes ago, Atomicnerd64 said:

probably going to go with an i7 and a big hdd and start with a 16gb ram stick

sounds appropriate and with one stick of ram you have upgrade room. i still highly recommend SSD or two drives in raid0. I don't know if redundancy is important to you. i think you'd be ok with just a daily backup

[Atomicnerd64]

11 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

sounds appropriate and with one stick of ram you have upgrade room. i still highly recommend SSD or two drives in raid0. I don't know if redundancy is important to you. i think you'd be ok with just a daily backup

planning to build a couple of freenas machines in the future but I will be backing up the VMs to an external hard drive and two other computers by exporting the OVA files. 

[Dark]

A 4c/8t processor will be a far greater choice if running more than 2 vm's on a host.

 

16GB ram if the vm's are running (game) engine based services.

 

SSD unless you are utilizing a cached raid array of 5+ disks.  (A quality SSD will not die before a platter drive, in most cases) Random reads/writes from multiple vm's require lots of IOPS. 

 

Dual NIC is only needed if your internet speed is over 1gb/s or if you're transferring data from another system on the same network that is also connected with dual nic (and utilizing a switch that supports proper link aggregation).

 

 

[samiscool51]

a 6 core could do this

one for the hyperviser

one for the printing service

two for one minecraft server

two for the other minecraft server

also maybe go with 24GB ram

16 GB for the minecraft servers

8 GB for other services like the hyper viser and printing service

maybe a 5820K? or AMD if you want to be cheap.

[Atomicnerd64]

6 hours ago, samiscool51 said:

a 6 core could do this

one for the hyperviser

one for the printing service

two for one minecraft server

two for the other minecraft server

also maybe go with 24GB ram

16 GB for the minecraft servers

8 GB for other services like the hyper viser and printing service

maybe a 5820K? or AMD if you want to be cheap.

there are no amd mitx motherbioards that support 6 core cpus and x99 is way out of budget. 

[Atomicnerd64]

9 hours ago, Dark said:

A 4c/8t processor will be a far greater choice if running more than 2 vm's on a host.

 

16GB ram if the vm's are running (game) engine based services.

 

SSD unless you are utilizing a cached raid array of 5+ disks.  (A quality SSD will not die before a platter drive, in most cases) Random reads/writes from multiple vm's require lots of IOPS. 

 

Dual NIC is only needed if your internet speed is over 1gb/s or if you're transferring data from another system on the same network that is also connected with dual nic (and utilizing a switch that supports proper link aggregation).

 

 

dual nics are useful if I want to virtualize my firewall but that's later and maybe. what I want them for in this stage is exactly because my main computer has two nics and I want to have as fast of a connection to it as possible to transfer files or do backups. also I will have an nfs share on my nas so the nodes have shared storage. 

[Atomicnerd64]

what do you guys think about building two amd am1 boxes with athlon 5350s? or maybe fm2+ ? there are itx boards for those sockets and the prices are reasonable. I don't know if they support amd-v though...

[SLAYR]

5 hours ago, Atomicnerd64 said:

what do you guys think about building two amd am1 boxes with athlon 5350s? or maybe fm2+ ? there are itx boards for those sockets and the prices are reasonable. I don't know if they support amd-v though...

They should be able to run virtulization, most cpus are, but you have to consider you then will need two cases, two psus, two ssd/s/hdds, and those add up in cost,  as well as tge horrendous single core speeds, I wouldn't be surprised if a penium 4 would be faster. A matx board and something like a fx 6xxx would most likely be a smaller option, you can find some pretty small matx cases.

Here is what I would recommend the psu might be a tfx or proprietary though.

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/sjMyxY

 

Or with a fx 8350, and a sfx psu)

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/xnVL7h

(not sure about the cpu cooler compatability with the small case)

[Atomicnerd64]

4 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

They should be able to run virtulization, most cpus are, but you have to consider you then will need two cases, two psus, two ssd/s/hdds, and those add up in cost,  as well as tge horrendous single core speeds, I wouldn't be surprised if a penium 4 would be faster. A matx board and something like a fx 6xxx would most likely be a smaller option, you can find some pretty small matx cases.

Here is what I would recommend the psu might be a tfx or proprietary though.

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/sjMyxY

 

Or with a fx 8350, and a sfx psu)

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/xnVL7h

(not sure about the cpu cooler compatability with the small case)

I have a spare psu and one 240gb ssd. but you're right. I should probably build something full size. I think I'll wait for xen because the fx cpus are really nicely priced and I can get an 8core for 150 euros but the single core performance is not that great. not that I care that much but still..might as well wait and see. 

[Dark]

7 hours ago, Atomicnerd64 said:

dual nics are useful if I want to virtualize my firewall but that's later and maybe. what I want them for in this stage is exactly because my main computer has two nics and I want to have as fast of a connection to it as possible to transfer files or do backups. also I will have an nfs share on my nas so the nodes have shared storage. 

If you're switch doesn't support 802.3ad link aggregation then you'll have to dedicate one port to something independent of the other...which will take some work if you don't have a switch that supports vlans (if you don't have LAG support then you likely don't have vlan support).  Not impossible to setup but may require additional hardware.