Looking for Some advice, new build Virtualization

Builds Legacy Guides
1

Hi all , I’m looking at building a virtualization server from older pc parts, only requirements are dual cpu, pcie-3 slots ddr3 and preferably 10-16 core cpus ,any ideas. Also looking as budget as possible.

Forgot to mention I will be running 2 windows 10 vm’s (one will be my nas one will be my Digital Combat Simulator Server PC, the final one will be a linux mint distro).

I was all set on picking up 2x Intel® Xeon®E5-2680 Processor and the dell MOTHERBOARD 82WXT motherboard which i found pretty cheaply on ebay, but I’m unable to find a case to fit this motherboard into.

Appreciate any replies , and sorry if this is in the wrong place…

Martin

2

I just finished a budget build similar to what you are looking to do and also found it hard to source certain parts due to limited stock, the case especially.

based on the information you provided my suggestion would be to find an ATX sized board, which makes finding a cheap case a lot easier. Also I would suggest staying away from the Dell precision motherboards only because they do not include an IPMI/BMC which can be helpful for remote diagnostics. Here is a good board which includes dual 8 core CPU (E5-2650) and some RAM all for $200:

3

Appreciate the reply, so at the moment it looks like I’m gonna go for 2 x E5-2680 LGA2011 8 core Cpu’s with this cheap Chinese motherboard. (x79 Dual CPU motherboard) and 64GB of ram.

Rough pricing

50$ per cpu
Mobo 100$ inc shipping
Ram 80 ish for 64 GB ddr3 ecc ram

So that SHOULD meet my needs. I hope.

4

Is there a reason why you need the 2680s specifically? I would recommend the dual 2650v2 combo, the CPUs are 8c/16t each and also newer than 2680v1. Passmark score is higher for the 2650v2:

Also, those cheap unbranded Chinese boards are of questionable quality, compatibility, and reliability.

5

I was going for the chinese board mainly because it was the only affordable dual cpu board i could find that also supported PCIe-3.0 and SATA 6Gb\s

The better mobos i found werr in the 200-300$ range which frankly is too much for me right now!

Oh DAYUUUM i didnt even realise the above post was a combo that came with 2 cpus and the mobo AND 16GB ram.

Thanks

6
2 Likes
7

That eBay listing I linked provides a good ATX sized motherboard and includes 2 E5-2650 V2 CPUs which @ALANMAN mentioned actually performs better than the CPU you were looking to use.

For the $200 you get:
1 x X9DRL-iF ($150)
2 x E5-2650 V2 ($90)
16GB DDR 3 RAM (~$40)
2 x CPU heatsinks (~$20)

8

Yeah that sounds like a plan. That feeling though when you’ve already put a best offer In on something on eBay and it won’t let you cancel it arrrgghh here’s hoping he turns it down but I doubt it for 10$ less than asking price

9

You should be able to retract your offer.

10

Nope it says theres less than 11 hours left so I cant!

11

That combo is an excellent deal for what you are looking for. Another option is the ASUS Z9PA-D8 - - see forum post ASUS Z9PA-D8 ATX Dual LGA2011 motherboard w/ LSI SAS 2008 - from $150

12

OK Not sure if this is the place to put it (if not please point me in the right direction) but I’ve decided I’m gonna go with the suggestion made and purchase the 200$ deal posted above (I’ve also found a pretty good deal on 128GB of DDR3 ECC RAM) , the questions that I have now all pertain to virtualization and what would be the best method for me to go about what I am attempting to Achieve.

I currently run one media/file server that has a storage spaces pool of 10TB’ of data (5TB used) which is currently hooked up to multiple drives via a PCIe SATA expansion card. (I have 7 drives in this machine of varying sizes)

A DCS (a flight sim) Server that only uses 2 hard drives (one is an NVME drive that the games server runs off) and a regular SSD as the OS drive. Both the above systems are running Win 10 x64 Pro

Then finally just a basic linux mint server for me to mess around on.

My first real question is what would be the best way to managed all this storage so that my VM’s only have access to certain drives.

Not sure if creating one massive pool with all the drives in it then choosing which drives are assigned to which machine is the way to go (only got so far as installing the hypervisor on a test pc and uploading the linux mint iso so far just to check it out)

sorry for the wall of text but this is my first time trying this out!

Thanks in advance.

MM

13

It seems like unraid would be able to do all of the things you want to do easily.

14

Yeah Unraid is interesting but the 139$ price tag for the unlimited version i would require due to the amount of storage devices is kinda putting me off.

Finally is there an option to use the existing setup you have (for example I dont really want to have to re install all the software on my DCS server or my NAS server) can i just make disk images and transfer them to the VM’s??

15

It’s worth the cost, it easily pays for itself. The flexibility and ease of use is second to none.

Unassigned drives and cache drives (non-array) do not count to your device limit.

16

Not sure what is meant by unassigned drives, wouldn’t all of my physical drives need to be assigned?

17

Nope, assigned simply means they are part of the array. Drives can exist outside of the array and can be used for different purposes (landing drives, appdata drives for docker containers, and drives for vm passthrough).

18

Aha so in my case I could setup unraid to basically just have all the drives as pass through then use windows to manage the drives themselves into storage spaces etc. Without breaking the limit on unraid (the other two pcs only both use 2 drives Max👍) it’s really only my Nas server that has a lot of drives

19

You could, but why would you want to do that for your main storage? Half of the point of Unraid is that its storage management is fantastic.

20

Mainly a lack of funds. I may just have to save some cash and bite the bullet and get the Unraid unlimited version.