dabl Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 I want to put together a new machine for my next unRAID server which will be able to run at least a couple of virtual machines, a linux box functioning primarily as a mail server (ie fairly low resource requirements) and a Win XP machine to do miscellaneous tasks such as transcoding media files. It's possible I'd want to run another vm for something else at some point. I was thinking of using at least 4 gig of ram and possibly 8 on the unRAID box. I was considering an Abit AB9 Pro (I'm aware Abit is going out of business) and understand it cannot use the newer 45nm (Wolfdale) Intel chips. Would an Intel E2200 or E2220 be adequate for my application or should I jump to an E4600? Would I be better off going with a motherboard that would support the E5000 or E7000 series Intel chips? I have an htpc with a Core 2 Duo E6600 65nm (Conroe) and am curious how that compares with the E2000/E5000/E7000 series. I might decide to use the E6600 if that made sense. Quote Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 8 GB will not help you.... unRAID's distro is 32bit. Just add a swap file. Quote Link to comment
dabl Posted January 13, 2009 Author Share Posted January 13, 2009 8 GB will not help you.... unRAID's distro is 32bit. Just add a swap file. cool, thanks bubbaQ did not realize that! So I know you run a vmware server on unRAID. What processor are you using now and what would you buy today if something different? For what it's worth I haven't ruled out AMD, I'm just more familar with the Intel word...... Quote Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 FWIW, the main advantage to me of having a VM on unRIAD is for slow processes, like transcoding, I can start it and forget... come back the next day and it is done. So if it finishes in 2 hours or 10 hours makes no difference to me. My main unRAID server still runs 4.3.3, which is not SMP.... it is fine for me so I am definately not hurting for CPU. I run an AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core Processor BE-2400, underclocked and udnervolted. Quote Link to comment
dabl Posted January 13, 2009 Author Share Posted January 13, 2009 Thanks for the comments. I don't have a sense yet of how some of the processors I mentioned compare to my E6600 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Cache and/or how vmware would 'feel' on those. Quote Link to comment
dabl Posted January 14, 2009 Author Share Posted January 14, 2009 Any opinions on whether it might be worthwhile to go for one of the new chips with the 'virtualization technology' such as the E8000 series? Quote Link to comment
jimwhite Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 Even the Q6600 has "virtualization technology".... Quote Link to comment
Eldron Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 I do not believe that VMware Server 2.0 supports any of the new CPU based extensions for virtualization. I think that has only made it's way in to the ESX line. CPU choice is about what you want to do. You listed transcoding as a task you would like to perform. I believe this task will scale with what it is given. So a faster host CPU will give the guest faster transcode times. A good option is run this box with only one vCPU assigned, so it does not take away from your mail and unRAID functions. Keep in mind that most VMs are just replacing boxes that have low utilization anyway. I run pyTivo at home on an old P4 2.4Ghz box with 2Gigs of RAM. I can have a single CPU with 384Megs of RAM XP guest transcode video fast enough to convert, from almost any format to Tivo compliant MPEG, faster than real time. This is while running the host OS and a Server 2003 DC. Guest performance is good even with only one real CPU to share. Quote Link to comment
dabl Posted January 15, 2009 Author Share Posted January 15, 2009 Even the Q6600 has "virtualization technology".... Ok, so some of the 'old' chips have it too. The essence of my question was whether this feature was worth seeking out or not. Your reply doesn't add much to inform that topic. Quote Link to comment
dabl Posted January 15, 2009 Author Share Posted January 15, 2009 I do not believe that VMware Server 2.0 supports any of the new CPU based extensions for virtualization. I think that has only made it's way in to the ESX line. CPU choice is about what you want to do. You listed transcoding as a task you would like to perform. I believe this task will scale with what it is given. So a faster host CPU will give the guest faster transcode times. A good option is run this box with only one vCPU assigned, so it does not take away from your mail and unRAID functions. Keep in mind that most VMs are just replacing boxes that have low utilization anyway. I run pyTivo at home on an old P4 2.4Ghz box with 2Gigs of RAM. I can have a single CPU with 384Megs of RAM XP guest transcode video fast enough to convert, from almost any format to Tivo compliant MPEG, faster than real time. This is while running the host OS and a Server 2003 DC. Guest performance is good even with only one real CPU to share. Cool, thanks very helpful! Quote Link to comment
NLS Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 Even the Q6600 has "virtualization technology".... Ok, so some of the 'old' chips have it too. The essence of my question was whether this feature was worth seeking out or not. Your reply doesn't add much to inform that topic. (here was a comment about bad manners - but then decided "who gives a ...") Quote Link to comment
jimwhite Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 (here was a comment about bad manners - but then decided "who gives a ...") Erased mine before I hit the Post button... Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 Not sure if this is helpful or not, but VMware is a pretty impressive accomplishment. I read a white paper on how it worked and it was surprisingly readable (this was about 1 1/2 years ago). It actually dynamically rewrites the assembler language instructions in kind of a JIT manner, and such that if it has to reexecute a piece it does not have to rewrite it again. It's ability to do all this and maintain addressing for jumps was very tricky. I thought it was very cool. Intel decided to implement some hardware features to help with virtualization, and once prototyped sent it to VMware to see what the performance improvement would be. It was actually faster without the hardware assist. Kinda funny. After that I think Intel worked with VMware to implement something that would actually HELP. I think by now the latest chips probably have helpful Virtualization features. I think it is called "Vanderpool" or something similar. I do NOT think that the hardware assist is a huge performance booster, but could be wrong. Quote Link to comment
dabl Posted January 15, 2009 Author Share Posted January 15, 2009 Intel decided to implement some hardware features to help with virtualization, and once prototyped sent it to VMware to see what the performance improvement would be. It was actually faster without the hardware assist. Kinda funny. After that I think Intel worked with VMware to implement something that would actually HELP. I think by now the latest chips probably have helpful Virtualization features. I think it is called "Vanderpool" or something similar. I do NOT think that the hardware assist is a huge performance booster, but could be wrong. Thanks, exactly the kind of info I was after. Makes sense to me. If 'VT' enabled chips were important for vmware performance for the average (non ESX) user, I suppose we'd be hearing about it. Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 I think it is called "Vanderpool" or something similar. I believe this is needed for OS's that support paravirtualization whereby the bare metal is shared amoung "similar" environments. vmware server runs on a host os and emulates an environment which supplies the virtual hardware. I'm not sure the vanderpool assists in this mode unless you are running 64Bit. In any case many of the standard core 2 processors support it. Additional reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paravirtualization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization_Technology Quote Link to comment
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