Building a workstation for virtualization and clouding

[ohsalmeron]

Hello there i'm new at this site but i love to participate in this community and grow together in this industry

I'd like to share with you this project i'm working in it about clouding and virtualization

I've done some practice with virtualization via VirtualBox and VMWare in many OS but it's always been in a desktop and mobile processors, so i don't really know much about servers processors like opteron and xeon

I want to build a Workstation based on Fedora and virtualize via RDP Windows 7 for 10 users and the best i know it would be something like this...

Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache 95W
Newegg.com - Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I72600K

ASRock P67 EXTREME4 (B3)
Newegg.com - ASRock P67 EXTREME4 (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

PNY GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB 192-bit GDDR5 X 2 (SLI)
Newegg.com - PNY VCGGTX550TXPB GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

SSD OCZ Vertex 3 2.5" 120GB SATA III X2 (RAID)
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)


G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 24GB (6 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 PC3 12800
Newegg.com - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 24GB (6 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9T2-24GBRL

Phantom PHAN-001WT White Steel / Plastic ATX Full Tower
Newegg.com - NZXT Phantom PHAN-001WT White Steel / Plastic Enthusiast ATX Full Tower Computer Case

CORSAIR 750W v2.2 SLI Certified 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7
Newegg.com - CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V v2.2 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply


For $1,924.91 Total + Multimedia stuff


The idea is to use Fedora as Base OS and then with VirtualBox or VMWare install Windows 7 Professional Bussiness with Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme and create users for all the people working in the Area.

This workstations intends many things and you might tell me if it is so:

Lower the time in repairing by cloning the Virtualized Windows 7 working
correctly

Clouding all the files in Fedora with security levels and just leaving the virtual disk for applications

Give a good look of an OS to all users with Windows 7 Aero via RDP
(hope the video cards can do the job)

It is intended to work with 10 computers with pentium 4 to connect via RDP and work at the virtual cloud

Any comments and suggestions would be very appreciated, specially your feedback and recommendations

[WebMaster]

Hi Ohsalmeron,

Welcome to Virtualization.net!

From hardware perspective, I would change a few things:

• Consider going for DUAL CPU motherboard, something like this:
  Newegg.com - SUPERMICRO MBD-X8DAH+-F-O Dual LGA 1366 Intel 5520 Extended ATX Dual Intel Xeon 5500 and 5600 Series Server Motherboard
• The video card choice is okay but considering the rating, I would go with something more reliable, like:
  Newegg.com - MSI R5770 Hawk Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card or
  
  Newegg.com - EVGA 01G-P3-1373-AR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) Superclocked EE 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
  
  
• For CPU, go with XEONs, at least 5420+. My choice would be in the E5620 and up range and if you have some money to spend, consider Hex Core CPU.

I think better hardware will give you HUGE performance boost and you will be able to work across 10 workstations without slowing the other down as dual CPUs will give you that extra punch.

For your hard drives, SSD make sense but they are expensive. Have you looked at NearLine SATA 6Gps? Or even 10k RPM raptor hard drives?

What type of RAID do you plan on having?

[ohsalmeron]

Brother thank you very much for this information, i'm seriously thinking about getting your recommended hardware, just one thing about the SSD

Isn't it important the transfer rate to be nearby the speed of CPU & GPU and if it is so, how much Write/Read speed would i need to take the best of all my hardware?

I was also reading about nComputing hardware and de L Series looks useful for what i want to do, instead of old Pentium 4 computers i could just use Thin Clients for all users but how's the compatibility with Windows 7 x64 SP1 or have you tried this stuff?

[WebMaster]

No problem.

SSD will be very FAST but I don't think it will much difference on SATA drives when your datastores are local. Are you planning on putting VMs on a SAN/NAS?

I think SSD will give you very speedy performance if you were to use something like parallels.

About nComputing,actually I am also doing my research for a client to implement thin client solution for classrooms. We are in early stage but I think client solution from ncomputing or wyse looks very good. I am pretty sure that their thin clients should not have any problems with windows 7.

[ohsalmeron]

Well i just ordered the L300 from nComputing looks like it supports 1080p and Windows 7, so as soon as i get the hardware working ill keep in touch with you with the details

For the workstation i made some testing with Sandy bridge i3 3.1Ghz, 8Gb DDR3 1333 and ECS GTX 460 and X2 750Gb HDD in RAID0, making with VMWare a windows 7 x64 SP1 with multiuser patch/crack and it did pretty well, i even played StarCraft 2 inside VMWare @ 1080p with medium settings and i got 45FPS which i think is fantastic.
Aero and everything working and microsoft gave a good evaluation to the virtual PC
here is the screenshot:
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/2...eenshothkk.jpg
And sorry about the spanish @VMWare i'm in Mexico and it is for spanish users ^^


So i have a few question about this project

Giving the expensiveness of the SSD i would go for cheap fast HDDs
What type of RAID do you recommend for this?

What software / hardware you recommend for automatically data backup without affecting the performance?

And again thanks for your time and information =)

[WebMaster]

Originally Posted by ohsalmeron

Giving the expensiveness of the SSD i would go for cheap fast HDDs
What type of RAID do you recommend for this?

What software / hardware you recommend for automatically data backup without affecting the performance?

And again thanks for your time and information =)

RAID 10 offers fast write and read so it will give you the most I/O but it requires 4 HD minimum.

For backup purposes, I would recommend Veeam.

Keep us posted with your implementation. If you are interested in blogging about this let me know.

Thanks

[ohsalmeron]

Sure i would like to blog about this, but i'm going to need a little more help with that because I've never done it before.

So a good start would be "where" and some example about how people blog about this and i'll do the rest

[WebMaster]

Well, here is our blog section:

Blog & Tutorials | Virtualization.net

Contact me with your first and last name and I will set you up:
Virtualization & Cloud Computing Forum - Contact Us

thanks

[victoria stiles]

Enterprises have been correlating Cloud computing and Virtualization. Virtualization can be seen as a key enabler for cloud computing. Physical and logical resources are made available through a virtual service layer across the enterprise.Cloud computing can extend virtualization across a wide area network (WAN) to put up a single virtual cloud data center.

[aalina]

Cloud computing is making a mark on the IT landscape, but it has yet to reach the level of universal acceptance that virtualization has achieved.