??Best Mobo for open source VM ??

[orphanaudio]

I do a lot of CNC, motion control, CAD, lighting control (DMX 512) and electronic design (PC layout).
I want to go VM
Win7 not cutting it
Win8 not here yet
Tired of XP slowly killing itself and the agonizing time to rebuild from scratch, but nothing else will work with the legacy software I have to use, until I can go full UNIX.
Hope to use the VM to run several XP machines and allow quick restore after a failed Frankenstein project.

What Mobo has the best record for a stable VM platform.
(would prefer ASUS or Mobo with similar reputation, running open source VM software platform)

 

[paperwastage]

what kind of VM do you want (or have experience with?)

Virtualbox, VMWare, KVM Qemu? what kind of USB/PCI passthrou do you need?

 

[orphanaudio]

Redhat KVM has been highly recommended and is in use at our local sandbox running 40 virtual machines with no issues on an old Dell enterprise server.

No security dongles or hardware requiring passthru, just a Brother Fax/Scanner/Printer.

 

[Harvey]

Sunday bump for a friend looking for info.

 

[Soulkeeper]

I can't say there is any single motherboard that has the best support

generally speaking most intel and amd chipsets (and many others) are well supported by the linux kernel. asus is not the best imo. you are best off with a simple reference design. Asus likes to heavily modify their components/bios or have weird acpi tables and rely on windows only software to control things (then provide no documentation for it). Besides it's usually cheaper to get a reference design or "no frills" motherboard anyways

also, have you decided what cpu or how many sockets you are interested in ?
ecc memory ? raid ? really hard to make a recommendation here

 

[orphanaudio]

My primary goals are:
-Ease of setup (don't want to jump thru hoops to get the hardware configured).
-Long term hardware stability.
-Cost effective (but not cheap, I know you get what you pay for)
-Reasonable performance out of the box (don't need a speed demon)

CPU:
Best recommendation so far is dual Xeon

Mobo:
Asus, MSI, Intel

Memory:
Probably 4g per CPU

Raid not required this is an app only system, it will store all user data and images on a local SAN.