[ale] [OT] Monster PC < $500

[Kenneth Price]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 1:23 PM, JK <jknapka at kneuro.net> wrote:

I use XEN in 2 production environments, and 3 office environments and love
it.  Whlle all Dom0 servers are CentOS5 - x86_64, the office environments
run multiple different 32 and 64-bit DomU guests on file-based images
(WinXP, CentOS3/4/5, Ubuntu 8.04, Win2003 Server).  The production
environment runs both 32 and 64-bit CentOS 5 paravirtualized guests using
LVM based images.  They perform great and are rock-solid.  Your hardware
specs are more than adequate for a XEN setup, although fully virtualized
guests like Windows will definitely eat up more CPU.


> I'd like to be able to run four virtual machines each
> equivalent to perhaps a 500Mhz P3 with 1GB RAM or thereabouts.
> Exact performance is negotiable.
>
> RAM     $130   2 x OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2
> 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2P10664GK -
> Retail ($65 per 2x2GB kit)
>

I swear by Crucial memory, and they swear by their product.  Never had
compatibility issues that weren't quickly resolved by them.
http://www.crucial.com/


>
> HD      $ 55   Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500AAKS 250GB 7200 RPM
> SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
>

Argh.  Might not be a popular opinion since a bunch of people seem to love
Western Digital, but I've had nothing but problems with their desktop drives
over the last 10 years, and I'm talking over 150 workstations - OEM and self
built.  That also includes this particular drive.  Out of 20 of these in a
server RAID array, I've had 8 that have needed replacing.  I recommend the
following.  I've been using 10 of these for the last 10 months without any
issue.

Seagate Barracuda ES ST3250620NS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard
Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148155

-Ken
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