I’m Looking at building a home server which will run 3 virtual servers.
x2 Ubuntu server .
x1 Windows Server.
I’m Planning on using my current Motherboard ( ASUS P8 Z77-VLX ) and CPU ( Intel i5-3330 ) for the server.
I’m planning on buying a new motherboard and CPU and want to know if its worth using the new hardware on my PC instead of my new server.
Depends what you are trying to do with the servers, but the i5 doesn’t have enough cores to power more than 2 demanding VMs. Windows server doesn’t like running single core. I usually give them 2 at least. Can’t speak for Ubuntu, but it would depend on what you are doing. Could always try it and if you aren’t getting the performance you want, move the VMs to newer hardware. How much RAM are you planning on using?
I’ll probably use 16 GB of ram, 4GB for the Server 4GB for windows and the rest for the two Ubuntu servers.
Its probely worth a try, since I could always just have 1 Ubuntu server and then expand to two when I get better hardware.
At the end of the day the main job for the Ubuntu server is to host nextcloud and the built in online office plugin.
What do you plan on using for the hypervisor? If you are going to try and run anything other than a type 1 hypervisor (one that installs bare metal on the hardware), I think you are going to run into issues. XenServer, ESXi, or Hyper-V Core will work ok for this and then you can focus your memory on the VMs themselves.
I’d highly recommend trying Proxmox or ovirt. They both support KVM, and proxmox supports Linux containers as well, so the Ubuntu servers can have much lower overhead because you’re not virtualizing any of the hardware or abstracting the CPU away.
I think 16GB of ram will work and I’ve done a lot with an i5 in the past.
The nextcloud host (and the collabora server that goes with it) will be able to get away with 1-2 cores and 2-4 GB of ram, depending on how much action it’s going to see. How many users do you expect to see on that server?