barebone Shuttle server build-out

Dooling37

Senior member
Jun 7, 2000
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hey all,

I'm planning to replace my 6 year old Dell "server". I basically want to be able to run ~2-6 VMs at any time, including a couple servers (SMTP, HTTP, SVN, etc.), network scanning systems, and one that will store all "important" files: old emails, financial docs, etc. In short, not exactly high performance needs, but the ability to run plenty of VMs with moderate performance needs each, ideally lasting at least 3-4 years.

I just ordered a barebone SHUTTLE SH67H3 (http://us.shuttle.com/barebone/Models/SH67H3.html), and now need to fill it out.

I'm well behind on hardware trends / releases, but current thinking from a few minutes of research is:

- i7-3370 quad core @ 3.4GHz (LGA 1155-compatible): $280 ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116502) (*no need for 3770k, if I'm not interested in overclocking, right?)

- 16 GB GSkill DDR3 1600: $110 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231489) (*may just go straight for 32 GB)

- I have an existing 1 TB drive that I'll use, and was planning to add another ~1 TB SATA 6.0 GB/s HDD (~$110), but someone suggested I look into an SSD for the OS partition, and caching most-frequently-accessed files (? - don't know yet how this is implemented, though). ~250-500 GB SSDs still go for $350-400, though.

Tentatively planning to run KVM virtualization on top of a stripped-down / minimal Ubuntu server install. May consider bare metal VMware vSphere Hypervisor install, though -- I hadn't known there was a free version of ESXi available, but also not sure just how limited it is.

Thoughts on any of this?

thanks,
Bob