Home Virtualization Server - Words of Wisdom?

Hi folks,

I have an old PC lying around (Pentium D 3.4 Ghz - Dual Core with VT-x support) and only 4 GB of Ram and I was thinking about using it for an initial "test" virtualization server for hosting windows XP, metasploitable2, or hosting any other virtual desktops I wish - non gaming. Yes, I realize it isn;'t the best there is, but it is what I have and if my learnings prove successful and enjoyable I will looked towards better hardware.

My questions are

  1. I am unable to get Proxmox to boot on my current "test lab system", is there other options (prefer free / opensource)?
  2. What future hardware for a cpu and motherboard would be best? (I know more cores is better, so for price / core that leads me to think AMD platform)? Budget is $400 (I have a case, 430W Corsair PSU).

Appreciate any comments / suggestions.

More cores = better [amd is better & cheaper]
More RAM = better [CL do not matter so much, just amount]

vmware vshpere or xenserver is free if i remember correctly.

2 Likes

Personally I use xenserver. Only limitation I find is handling updates is a bit of a pain. But small price to pay for not having to pay the absurd amount of money they want.

I agree but also disagree. AMD is better at the cheaper end. Not at the higher.

As for proxmox, what's the issue?

1 Like

Well if you want to use LXC and KVM fedora server or Centos are a good choice as well. Xenserver and Opensuse are good options for Xen. With Opensuse I would just not bother with a GUI since you don't need it and handle the VMs in Yast over ssh.

If you are even planing on getting a job in the IT world I would say look into Vmware esxi. its the free version of esx. I say esx is because this is what most enterprise networks use it and learning it would only give you a leg up.

its best your MB have an intel NIC but you can inject the realtek ones into the iso pretty easy if you need too(google is your friend here)

I imagine Proxmox will work fine on that system as long as you don't try to use the new ZFS features. (You don't really need those for a home lab like this anyway) But if you're looking for more options, you could try Ubuntu with PHPvirtualbox, or you could try oVirt which is supposed to be like Proxmox but cooler.

The only bad thing about VMware and vbox is I don't think they support OpenVZ (proxmox does) but I could be wrong.

I've heard good things about Xenserver but I've never tried it myself.

Feel free to send me a PM if you have Proxmox questions, I've been running it on my server (an FX box with a cheap mobo and a buttload of RAM) for a few years now and I havent had any issues out of it (besides this one time I broke the bootloader but that was my fault lol)

$400 not 4000 so yes better. If it were 4000 then hed be crazy not to go with a zeon or even the new x99 platform.

Had to re-edit since my mobile doesn't like to edits very well and autocorrect very seldom correct.

For consumer "servers" I really like AMD. You can pick up a 6 core (which just screams "RUN VMS ON ME!!!") And a cheap mobo that supports 32 or even 64 GB of RAM for DIRT CHEAP. It doesn't compete with some 16 core Xeon with 128GB of ECC DDR4 or something insane like that, but for the price, it makes a great home lab (especially when combined with pfsense and 1 or 2 good switches).

After installation and the system reboots I just get a black screen with a cursor blinking in the upper left corner.

No issues when trying to install with that same medium to a Virtual Box VM on my Windows Machine. Proxmox works and plays just fine.

So my thought was to explorer "better" hardware.

Sounds like grub is not installing to the correct drive. Do you have multiple disks in the system? If so remove them when installing.

That is what I thought was the cause as well. Kind of pain to remove them, but may as well give that a try. Thanks (yikes, sometimes the obvious are overlooked) :-)

Well that didn't work removing the other drive. Resulted in "No Bootable Device" :-(

ah yeah, i forgot to mention it, true performance of vm is dependent on hdd, raid systems. Rest can be overlooked. (random r/w is what you should be looking at)

Thanks

Well I managed to get XenServer 6.5 setup, booted, running well, and installing a Windows VM over the network :-)

Thanks folks, I am going to aim for a replacement for this box (AMD 6 core with 16 GBs of RAM) should this learning prove beneficial for my testing lab over my current main PC using multiple Virtual Machines.

i'd also try building some raid 0 with 2-4+ drives [more = better], you'll notice big improvements in vm performance.

ESXi is free.....

Intel VT-x is the lowest form of virtualization, VT-d CPUs cost a lot, but do more. AMD CPUs are more generous here.

If you are considering Linux servers check out Docker. Strictly speaking Docker supports Linux containers rather than full virtualization, but it's magical stuff.

Link: https://www.docker.com/

For Linux Servers Links:
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/turnkeylinux/files/iso/

Raid 0... I really wish this was never called a RAID level.

Great so then they loses one drive and all of there VMs.

If you want speed and don't want to loose data go with 4 drives in a raid 10 config; yes you only have half of the physical data, but you don't have to worry about loosing everything if you have a drive failure.

Xenserver all the way. Opensource and free. Import Orchestra appliance for even more fun.

1 Like