Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V

Earlier this year I built a custom server with a few goals in mind:

Very powerful & capable of running multiple machines for an extended time
Must be quiet
Fault tolerant
Not requiring a hardware upgrade for a few years

The specs for this box have made it something that's turned into a great business expense as I've got so much use out of it. It's a nice strong machine that runs VERY quiet:

Dual Quad Core Intel Xeon 2.33Ghz (8 cores total)
32GB RAM FBDIMM DDR2-800
1.5TB 7200 RPM fault tolerant storage (RAID 0+1)

I documented the build out experience in a series of three posts (part 1, part 2 & part 3) which explained how it was built and the parts used. Since then, and for some reason since posting a few pictures to Facebook of a cabinet I built over the last week to house it (along with my other computer equipment), I've received a lot of questions about not just the build out and box, but also general use and management. So instead of sending people to multiple links across my blog, I've written up a new article that supplements these other posts. In it I cover:

Primary Virtualzation Server Goals
First Failed Attempt
Hardware List & Tech Specs
Buildout & Placement
Server Software Setup
Virtual Machine / Client Connectivity - Working with the VMs on a Daily Basis

I hope this is helpful to some folks out there considering on doing something similar. You can read the whole article here:

» Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V

Technorati Tags: hyper-v,virtualization,sharepoint

posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2008 12:29 AM

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# re: Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V 12/24/2008 2:24 AM Marc

Great choice of cases, I have the exact same one and even when I game on it with all the fans at full speed you cant hear it, excellent case! However, for SP dev I have a brand new Dell laptop with 8gb ram, quad core and a solid state drive.

# re: Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V 12/24/2008 5:49 AM matthijs hoekstra

Andrew,

What changed your mind to use Hyper-V instead of VMWare? I thought one of your wishes was to copy the image to your laptop so you could take it with you?
I use hyper-v at one of my laptops and at the main server at home and i love it too :) snapshots saved my demo's lots of times lately :)

# re: Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V 12/24/2008 8:01 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Matthijs-
I had some networking issues with VMWare Server 2.0... and while it was RC, I wanted to give Hyper-V a fair shake. I was quite pleased with everything about Hyper-V so I never looked back. I did want to go with ESX initially, but getting the right hardware configuration proved to be a lot more challenging and time consuming than I earlier expected... after fighting with it for a while, I gave up. Another thing... running on top of Windows just made me feel better as I don't have any Linux experience (think ESX) and copying VHD files or doing that kind of management was just more native to me.

# re: Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V 12/24/2008 8:18 AM Peruri

I am building a machine with similar configuration. 8 cores, 24 GB. 1 TB

Can you please mention how much power is being consumed by your machine.

# re: Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V 12/24/2008 9:08 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Peruri-
Uh... less than 1000w :) Seriously, I never really added it up. Not even sure how to measure that.

# re: Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V 12/24/2008 10:56 AM Tom Resing

Andrew,
Thanks for the pictures. Sounds like a great system and looks great too. If you were curious about power usage, they sell these power meter's pretty cheap. I found an old blog post discussing them: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000353.html
-Tom

# re: Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V 12/24/2008 12:12 PM Bob Fox

Uhmm.. go out your door to the side of the house and look at that little glass ball and in there is a little needle that measures your electric usage.... my guess is that its spinning right now :)

Seriously though im jealous.. think its time i build one of these myself for the home office.

Fox

# re: Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V 12/24/2008 2:55 PM Peruri

I guess I just have to buy the watt meter and plug it in. Some thing like this

http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1230148433&sr=8-1

# re: Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V 12/25/2008 8:02 AM Matthew Chestnut

AC -

You can measure power usage using this technique:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000353.html

# re: Creating a Custom and Quiet Virtualization Rig with Microsoft's Hyper-V 12/25/2008 10:55 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

I could measure the power consumption of this box, but only if I cared at the moment. I needed a powerful & quiet virtualization box. How much power it uses is just the cost of doing business as far as I'm concerned. If someone wants to donate a power meter, I'll gladly test it, but $20 for a single use thing that doesn't really concern me... I'll pass :)

But for those who are sticklers... I did replace 3 workstations with this machine and since running it for the last 6mo, have not noticed my power bill go up.

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