Opinions on projected setup

[Gamingphreek]

Right now, I plan on getting an old laptop (More specifically a cheap Dell Latitude D620 with 4GB of RAM) to host VM's on it (The C2D T5600 has VT-x extensions). I plan on using this configuration:

Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
-VM1- Linux (IT Security dummy system for random testing)
-VM2- OpenVPN (Hosting Secure VPN for WAN-side connections)
-VM3- Windows 7 (Hosting DLNA media share - Possibly ripping my Blu Ray movies to a large HDD for playback on the PS3)

I plan on installing a VNC client accepting LAN-side connections only for the 2 Linux VM's and allowing RPC for the Windows 7 system on LAN-side only as well. The VPN will allow me to securely connect from WAN-side so I can use both of those services remotely.

The system will be connected via Ethernet, not wireless obviously.

Am I asking too much out of an older laptop?
The idea behind using a VPN for remote connections is security. Will this work in the way I intend it and with the security I am hoping for?

Thanks,
-Kevin

 

[Emulex]

as long as you can get drivers for 2KR8 signed 64bit for it you should be golden.

go install win7 x64 and you'll see if it has issues with drivers.

2kR8 will not run unsigned drivers and remember the 1gb overhead for hyper-V so you are talking not much ram. i'd do 8gb personally.

disk i/o is going to be atrocious. maybe you can do SSD that would help alot.

 

[Gamingphreek]

as long as you can get drivers for 2KR8 signed 64bit for it you should be golden.

go install win7 x64 and you'll see if it has issues with drivers.

2kR8 will not run unsigned drivers and remember the 1gb overhead for hyper-V so you are talking not much ram. i'd do 8gb personally.

disk i/o is going to be atrocious. maybe you can do SSD that would help alot.

I actually did not know about the 1GB overhead for Hyper-V. Doesn't that partially defeat the purpose of running a Standalone HyperVisor when an HyperVisor in Windows probably consumes less memory?

I don't imagine I would have a problem with drivers. If memory serves me correctly, those Dell's should be a standard Intel Chipset with an Nvidia Graphics card of some sort running on top.

Getting an SSD would defeat the purpose of a cheap laptop solution though. Any reason why you don't think a 7200RPM Laptop drive for boot and then a USB enclosure for media storage will be much slower?

4GB of RAM might be pushing it, your right... I feel like a laptop is best for this (I would like to "rackmount" it in my entertainment center) but its starting to seem like I might be asking a bit much from a laptop.

-Kevin

 

[skyking]

I know it will cost more, but if you want small with excellent performance and upgrade possibility, check this out.
http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/DH57JG/DH57JG-overview.htm
8 GB of Ram support, one of the latest intel chipsets and processors, E-SATA, HDMI

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...tel-_-13121401

 

[Gamingphreek]

I know it will cost more, but if you want small with excellent performance and upgrade possibility, check this out.
http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/DH57JG/DH57JG-overview.htm
8 GB of Ram support, one of the latest intel chipsets and processors, E-SATA, HDMI

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...tel-_-13121401

I always swore that next time I built a desktop, it would be my Gaming/Everyday use machine. I'm starting to think that isn't going to pan out and that I'll just have to build more than 1 - I just don't have a a desk/space in my apartment...hmm

Ya'll are starting to tempt me into building a desktop. Its just with no built in LCD and keyboard and whatnot, it is a bigger footprint and more expensive. You guys honestly don't think boosting a D620 to 8GB of RAM and a 7200RPM drive would be enough?

 

[skyking]

D620 will only go 4 GB, and you are doing a whole lot of work to build a crippled server.

 

[Gamingphreek]

D620 will only go 4 GB, and you are doing a whole lot of work to build a crippled server.

How could they limit it to 4GB. It is a 64-bit processor running a standard intel chipset. Unless they don't make 4GB sticks of DDR2 SO-DIMM I don't understand how it could be limited.

You do make a good point. That is a lot of work to build a crippled server .

2x D620's would work though? 4GB each? $500 there and I get more than I could get by building my own system in my mind.

-Kevin

 

[imagoon]

How could they limit it to 4GB. It is a 64-bit processor running a standard intel chipset. Unless they don't make 4GB sticks of DDR2 SO-DIMM I don't understand how it could be limited.

You do make a good point. That is a lot of work to build a crippled server .

2x D620's would work though? 4GB each? $500 there and I get more than I could get by building my own system in my mind.

-Kevin

Easy. Have a 32bit wide address bus in the memory controller. The memory controller simply can't request memory addresses above 4gig.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Easy. Have a 32bit wide address bus in the memory controller. The memory controller simply can't request memory addresses above 4gig.

The memory controller on the Northbridge is still an Intel controller. It is still either a 36-bit or 48-bit controller.

From what I can tell, it is an arbitrary limitation that Dell put in their BIOS. What a hideously bad idea.... 64-bit chip but stuck at 4GB.

 

[imagoon]

The memory controller on the Northbridge is still an Intel controller. It is still either a 36-bit or 48-bit controller.

From what I can tell, it is an arbitrary limitation that Dell put in their BIOS. What a hideously bad idea.... 64-bit chip but stuck at 4GB.

No. It is a limitation in the Intel North bridge. Look up Intel 945 and 4gig limitation. The 955/965/975 all have support for 4gig of memory as they allow larger than 32bit addressing to the ram.

 

[mvbighead]

2x D620's would work though? 4GB each? $500 there and I get more than I could get by building my own system in my mind.

-Kevin

I think you're wrong here, and I don't appear to be the only one.

For $500, you could build something similar to this:

MB - $70 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121438
CPU - $149 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-207-_-Product
Memory - $78 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-424-_-Product
HDD - $43/unit - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136113
Case - ~$50
PSU - ~$60

And I am sure there are better suggestions out there, but the above gives you 8GB of RAM, 4 cores, and plenty of flexibility. Add in a few hard drives (and you could easily you old drives you have sitting around), and try to keep 1 or 2 VMs per disk, and you should have something that shouldn't crawl too poorly. And, later on down the line, you could throw in a hardware RAID controller and a good set of drives to have one datastore instead of several independent ones. And as for the LCD, KB, and mouse... well, you should only need that for the initial configuration, and then use RDP the rest of the way from your workstation.

Personally, laptops for such a task seem like a poor idea. They aren't built for a high CPU load, and if they get hot, the fan goes nuts try to keep the processor cool. A desktop could be built to have proper airflow, any number of drives you want (provided you have the ports for them), and give you plenty room for upgrades down the line.

 

[Emulex]

use esxi it has far smaller footprint!! boot off SLC usb stick and you're good to go (don't use mlc stick).

then you can use your disk solely for datastore.


hyper-v is the suck imo.

 

[mvbighead]

One last note on the config I mentioned above is that the hardware could most definitely be used for ESX/ESXi if you so chose. ESX is quite picky about the hardware it allows, but as long as you stick with Broadcom or Intel NICs (and few select others), you're set. Just something to think about, as I also prefer ESX/ESXi to HyperV.

 

[Gamingphreek]

I think you're wrong here, and I don't appear to be the only one.

For $500, you could build something similar to this:

MB - $70 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121438
CPU - $149 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-207-_-Product
Memory - $78 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-424-_-Product
HDD - $43/unit - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136113
Case - ~$50
PSU - ~$60

And I am sure there are better suggestions out there, but the above gives you 8GB of RAM, 4 cores, and plenty of flexibility. Add in a few hard drives (and you could easily you old drives you have sitting around), and try to keep 1 or 2 VMs per disk, and you should have something that shouldn't crawl too poorly. And, later on down the line, you could throw in a hardware RAID controller and a good set of drives to have one datastore instead of several independent ones. And as for the LCD, KB, and mouse... well, you should only need that for the initial configuration, and then use RDP the rest of the way from your workstation.

Personally, laptops for such a task seem like a poor idea. They aren't built for a high CPU load, and if they get hot, the fan goes nuts try to keep the processor cool. A desktop could be built to have proper airflow, any number of drives you want (provided you have the ports for them), and give you plenty room for upgrades down the line.

That is a pretty convincing setup - thanks for the spec.

I suppose I just liked the idea of having everything jammed in the laptop where I could just pull it out if I needed. Perhaps not the most practical solution.

I had completely neglected Socket 775 based boards. I didn't think there was any point in using them anymore. Clearly I was mistaken

 

[Gamingphreek]

One last note on the config I mentioned above is that the hardware could most definitely be used for ESX/ESXi if you so chose. ESX is quite picky about the hardware it allows, but as long as you stick with Broadcom or Intel NICs (and few select others), you're set. Just something to think about, as I also prefer ESX/ESXi to HyperV.

Correct me if I am wrong, but both of them are Type 1 Hypervisors and thus should operate very similarly.

Thats 2 votes for ESXi though so I am doing some research on it. I believe in college, my Professor, when he gave every person in the class a VM to use, used ESXi.

Is there any reason in particular that you like ESXi over Hyper-V?

-Kevin

 

[yinan]

ESXi has a much lighter footprint than Hyper-V, and manages resources MUCH better than Hyper-V, and is basically the standard for virtualization.

 

[drebo]

Hyper-V has its purposes, but ESXi is superior, as far as I'm concerned.

It's footprint on the system on which it's running is tiny by comparison. A few hundred megs of hard disk space and a few hundred megs of memory. By comparison, a Server 2008 R2 installation is gi-fucking-gantic.

The tradeoff is that you don't get to actually use the host OS as an OS, and you have no access to the VMs from the console. That's generally a tradeoff that's well made, though.

Also, the new vSphere 4.1 (ESXi replacement) is quite forgiving about your hardware. Works with realtek nics and standard desktop components, such as an Intel storage controller, without the need to modify the config scripts prior to installation.

 

[mvbighead]

Correct me if I am wrong, but both of them are Type 1 Hypervisors and thus should operate very similarly.

Thats 2 votes for ESXi though so I am doing some research on it. I believe in college, my Professor, when he gave every person in the class a VM to use, used ESXi.

Is there any reason in particular that you like ESXi over Hyper-V?

-Kevin

What the gents/gals below me said, and in addition, networking. I am not extremely fluent with HyperV, but after leaving an MS conference, they pumped their stuff so much I thought I'd have to try it. So I did, and after a month or so, decided that I was better off with ESX. One of the biggest issues I have with HyperV is that the network controllers actually appear as network controllers in the Windows environment of the host. I like the ease of ESX/i where the host is entirely separate from any of its guests. I can bind NICs to a virtual switch, and it all appears as a completely separate network environment.

In each of my virtual switches, I have two NICs that are attached to two separate physical switches. While the same may be possible with HyperV, it just isn't as "fluid" IMO.

Granted, HyperV has come a long way and may be slowly closing some of the GAP, ESX/i is still the standard as far as most virtualization environments go.

 

[mvbighead]

That is a pretty convincing setup - thanks for the spec.

I suppose I just liked the idea of having everything jammed in the laptop where I could just pull it out if I needed. Perhaps not the most practical solution.

I had completely neglected Socket 775 based boards. I didn't think there was any point in using them anymore. Clearly I was mistaken

Well, there are a multitude of options that you can go with, I just went that route for cost and to ensure that an Intel brand MB was used, as it is much easier to find one of those with a Broadcom or Intel NIC built in, as opposed to the Realtek and other budget based controllers that won't work with ESX/i.

And, the Core2 CPUs have Virtualization technology built in which allows for a better virtualization experience. Granted, newer ones do as well, but older tech is a bit cheaper.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well, there are a multitude of options that you can go with, I just went that route for cost and to ensure that an Intel brand MB was used, as it is much easier to find one of those with a Broadcom or Intel NIC built in, as opposed to the Realtek and other budget based controllers that won't work with ESX/i.

And, the Core2 CPUs have Virtualization technology built in which allows for a better virtualization experience. Granted, newer ones do as well, but older tech is a bit cheaper.

Absolutely. If only I had the money set aside for one of the i5 or i7 processors with the Nested Paging support.

At any rate, you guys have sold me on ESXi haha. I'm going to read up and make sure I am familiar with the interface before I go full speed ahead, but I'm leaning towards a build similar to the one above with ESXi running.

-Kevin

 

[mvbighead]

Absolutely. If only I had the money set aside for one of the i5 or i7 processors with the Nested Paging support.

At any rate, you guys have sold me on ESXi haha. I'm going to read up and make sure I am familiar with the interface before I go full speed ahead, but I'm leaning towards a build similar to the one above with ESXi running.

-Kevin

ESXi shouldn't be too hard for you to get a handle of. You have VMs and Switches, and you configure each. There is plenty of fine tuning that can be done, but out of the box it works. No drivers to install, no nothing to really mess with.

I actually run a config similar to the one I described above. I have two NICs, and one connects to my cable modem and has a PFSense VM being used as my router, with the other NIC connected to the rest of my network. It's all pretty slick, and you never really have to mess with the host.

 

[Emulex]

can you do promisc mode with hyper-v? Kinda necessary to do virtual routers/firewalls/ips/etc?

 

[drebo]

can you do promisc mode with hyper-v? Kinda necessary to do virtual routers/firewalls/ips/etc?

I'm pretty sure that it does.

It does support VLAN trunking, so it must.

 

[Gamingphreek]

I would be all about hosting a virtual router/firewall if I didn't have FiOS. If I were to switch from MoCA to Ethernet, I would then lose the ability to download the guide to my Set Top Box (Which would then require me to get a TiVo or something.