Re: [Hampshire] New box for Virtualisation

I think you are about right in your thinking, so Ubuntu as the host OS,
but what are the guest operating systems? What virtualisation software?
It might be more cost effective (and possibly cooler) to go for lots of
moderate processors/cores rather than a smaller number of screaming fast
ones. Virtualisation with several VMs should spread out over the
processors nicely.
If it is just for virtualisation then avoid using the host as a general
purpose workstation (put the fancy graphics card somewhere else:-) ), if
you break the host then you break all the guests at once.

Alan.

Rob Malpass wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I need some pretty basic advice on building a new box specifically for the purposes of virtualisation (running about 3 servers). My current Sempron 3200+ with 2Gb of RAM isn't cutting it. So, without the funds to go really top end, I'm going for the fastest CPU I can afford and give it plenty of RAM. Q1 - is this a good strategy for virtualisation?
>
> Q2 Do I have to run a 64-bit kernel to address all 6Gb (if I go for that much) RAM? I heard a while back that XP can't handle anything over 2Gb without patching - not sure about Vista. Probably an academic debate because I intend to run Ubuntu - but I wanted to check whether it had the same restriction. The problem is that the graphics card I have in mind (bought for 80UKP last year) didn't work well with 64-bit Ubuntu or Fedora - though that's probably fixed by now. Running in 32-bit mode (both distros) was fine - but would obviously be self defeating if I can only address 1/3 of my RAM as a result of running in 32-bit mode.
>
> Basic questions for a Monday morning I know but a bit of sage advice here could save me a lot of time and money.
>
> Thanks in advance (as always).
>
> Cheers
> Rob
>