Interesting Thread. I work on Microsoft virtualization technologies and will add my 0.2
Yes I believe you can build a system which works better (faster) then the expensive branded hardware.
Consider the following points when choosing hardware.
1) Disk
The Disk is one of the biggest bottle necks when it comes to performance hence choose the fastest possible disk, and split the IOPS across physical disks. Choose the fastest interface you can afford.
(SATA, SCSI, SAS, PATA, iSCSI, IDE, USB)
(USB is pretty slow but not very far behind.) - Personally I use USB on my laptop where I cannot use the others.
Keeping the VHD files remote & connecting to them via iSCSI is also a fantastic idea.
2) CPU
Ensure the Cpu is capable of Intel VT (or AMD-v) - These are 17 instructions which will give you hardware assisted virtualization capability.
I would also suggest you buy a CPU which can run x64. That way you can use Microsoft’s Hyper-v due for release shortly. (I use the Beta version on Hyper-v & it performs great)
3) Memory
Choose the fastest & the as much as possible.
4) Display Card
Be Careful here. You do not need any fancy display card because the hardware is emulated. (Whatever physical hardware you choose the hardware inside the guest will be the same – S3Trio)
The risk of using a powerful display card is that the driver could eat up precious kernel memory thus causing a performance hit. (In fact I never recommend using anything other than a simple svga display driver on a server)
HTH & do remember to optimize the OS for virtualization after you have setup the OS. |