Best components for a Virtual Server host machine [closed]-Collection of common programming errors

“Good” and “Not Expensive” don’t usually belong in the same sentence together…

That said, here’s some general pointers:

1) If you’re on the cheap, go for an Intel Core 2 processor. Dual or Quad Core, whichever, depending on how many VMs you want to run. Choose the ones with the biggest cache you can afford.

2) The other advantage of running a Core 2 is that RAM (DDR2) is exceptionally cheap. You need lots of it. Lots and lots. 8Gb would be a good number to start at. Note that because this is on the cheap, there will be no error checking (ECC), so it’s not really that ideal.

3) Disk I/O is never going to be as good as it would be in a native solution, but it all comes down to what you want. Highly Redundant and Super Fast? RAID10. Massive storage with low cost? RAID5. By spending $200 on a motherboard you should get one with on-board RAID, but don’t be suprised if it doesn’t do RAID5.

4) Steer clear of massive disks. My most recent app server has 5x 1TB drives, and I had a disk fail the other week. 1TB is a lot of storage to risk. Again, go for big cache over capacity.

5) Most good motherboards will have dual NICs, however if they don’t, any half-decent PCI nic should do. If budget permits, get a dual nic card and use redundancy.

For the record, the app server I recently deployed using desktop components is:

Core 2 Quad 2.8Ghz
8Gb DDR2 RAM
5x 1TB RAID-5 (SATA-150)
Adaptec RAID card

And it runs quite nicely. On the flip site, the last app server I deployed with server components is:

Dual Quad-Core Xeon 2.4Ghz
24Gb FB-DIMM ECC REG'd RAM
3x 74Gb SAS Disks
iSCSI remote disks

Budget permitting, I would choose the 2nd server any day.