Computer/Server spec advice

[PP Mguire]

As much as you probably don't want to hear this, an SSD for each VM or every 2 VMs would greatly increase its responsiveness as well as having way more RAM per VM to disable pagefile. Try to remember each individual virtual system is accessing the same HDD at the same time which also makes it quite slow. I had 2 VMs running on a 3960x with 64GB of RAM. Each had 2 cores and 8GB of RAM a piece but it was still kinda slow because both were sharing a 1TB drive. A high IOPS SSD could help some of your current problems.

 

[dwright]

I was thinking of 2 x 8GB RAM for 16GB in total. Would just manage with 8-10 VM's running to start until I get more RAM. Would 16GB RAM be enough to start for 8 to 10 VM's and Excel, Windows Live etc running on the host?

Ok £900 for the board, CPU and 16GB RAM. I could put in a little extra for the Case and PSU.

What would be a good OS to use on the host? Should it be a server OS? I run Win7 on my VM's

Is it worth considering getting a smallish solid state hard drive to install this OS on and install all other programs on a seperate VM that I could create for Excel, Windows Live, Browsers etc? The Solid State drive would be left completely untouched apart from the OS. I have been told that these drives are very efficient and as it would just be the OS installed on it, I wouldn't have to spend a fortune.

 

[dwright]

SSD option is interesting hear. I'll have a look at costs - I've heard they are quite expensive, but I could possibly get away with each VM only requiring 65GB to 100GB storage space.

 

[PP Mguire]

16GB of RAM you could do 7 VMs. 2GB per VM and 2 for the host. Remember, each VM takes a 2GB chunk of RAM (I wouldn't use any less) from the host and the host can't see or use that RAM anymore. If the host itself runs out of RAM it is then running off the pagefile. If you have pagefile disabled you'll either get extremely slow or the whole thing will crash. When running an SSD you have to disable pagefile use for the SSD and either disable it completely or put it on a standard HDD.

A 64GB SSD would do the trick just fine and you can get those for around 60 bucks here in the US.

This is what I would do personally. Get the Intel case and PSU, get the single 16 core Opteron, get 32GB of RAM, and when you actually need a second CPU go ahead and get the new CPU and board at the same time. That way there, you can have the proper amount of RAM you need now and will probably save a bit of cash in the process. I can't possibly see you need 32 cores any time soon as you are going from 2 VMs now to 15. Can't stress how you can't starve each machine of RAM. Each Opteron core itself is quicker than each Q8200 core so you are getting a performance boost there, then adding extra RAM to it you have more overhead for background processes.

For the OS, some would argue with me but I would use Windows 7 Pro x64.

 

[dwright]

I assume I would need some sort of seperate storage unit for hardrives if I were to go down that route. I wouldn't be able to store 15 SSD's in a server tower I assume. Either way, the multiple SSD's could be a later purchase. I assume I can go with the G34 motherboard, the Opteron and the case, use my current drives from the QUAD core and at a later date upgrade to individual hardrives?

 

[PP Mguire]

Well I initially meant an SSD for the main OS. A small 64GB to put the host OS and VMWare (or VM software) on. 15 VMs on 2 separate HDDs is going to be slow but I understand you are on a budget here. That will work to start out with, but I would try to get a few more drives later to balance the load. I'm sure they aren't taxing the HDDs individually that bad, but all together would be pretty bad.

For the final setup, you don't have to put each VM individually on an SSD even though that would be the best. You can bundle them and it would still be much quicker than individually on HDDs or bundles on HDDs. That can be saved for a later date though. Was just brainstorming some ideas for you.

 

[dwright]

I think I should bite the bullet slightly and go for the socket G34 now, 1 CPU, 32 GB RAM, server case and PSU. Also get a small SSD as you said for the OS, but for now run the VM's off my existing HDD's and see how they perform compared to what I have at present. I would also consider to start, getting an SSD that could hold 2 of my VM's just to get started down that route and see how much better they run from SSD than off HDD.

If I eventually end up buying multiple SSD's and optimally installing 1 VM per SSD, I may obviously end up with quite a few SSD's. Can you store as many as 15 SSD's in a server tower?

 

[PP Mguire]

The case you linked says it supports up to 6 drives. So I'm going to say no unless you get creative for that particular case. I think you have the right idea though, just see how the HDDs perform with the new hardware then look at SSDs later. I would for sure get the SSD for the OS though, and make sure you disable the pagefile on the SSD.

Edit: This picture indicates 10 bays for drives. You can also put a 2.5" drive bay for the SSDs in the 5.25" bays on top.

 

[Frosty is a Snowman]

So just to get this right, you want to run 15 instances of an application and 1 web page.
As far as I am aware you don't need to have 15 virtual desktops running on a super computer to perform this task, you could use something like V-App.
And have it setup on one or two cheap servers.

so rather than running 15 full virtual desktops each with a running application, you could run just 15 instances of the virtual application.
This would reduce the system requirements massively.
Think of the system resources it takes to run 15 operating systems, compared to 15 applications, and you soon realise that you might be going about this the wrong way and could be looking at buying a large server to do a job that could be performed on a small server, but just deployed in a different way.

I will admit that I am not an expert in the field of virtual apps though, so it might be worth making a post in the "Virtualization Infrastructure" section and ask the people in there how they would set this up, as you might be looking at buying far too much hardware to perform a simple task.

 

[dwright]

Frosty, I want to run the automated software program and 1 webpage in each VM.

I would actually need to run 15 VM's as although the software is the same, I am signing into the software using 15 different accounts and each account is doing something different.