Well, after much internal debate about whether or not I was going to build or buy, especially reading
knwminus' Build or Buy thread, I decided that I was gonna drop my loot on a new
HP ML110 G6. For the price of an extremely barebone solution, it's not terrible. The processor has both Hardware VT and has Hyperthreading (an i3-530...more than enough for me). Maximum memory is 16GB and after researching the memory on my favorite site since my time at the help desk,
www.crucial.com, I not only found the memory I needed, but got it much cheaper than Crucial's (which is always the case...Crucial is where I go just to get the specs quickly. I almost feel bad that I pretty much never buy from there
...but if they were never around, that would mean I'd have gone to HP's site anyway. LOL ). I'm going for 2 Kingston's
KVR1333D3E9S/4G RAM chips so I get 8GB for now, and will get the final 8GB a short time later. This
vendor, "Next Warehouse", seems pretty reputable, and they had both the best price and wasn't crazy with shipping. I'm pretty much gonna deal with SATA drives, as I don't need RAID and plus I am going to need the performance for my VMs. So I'll spread them out. 250 GB drives should be silly cheap, so maybe I'll just get the 4 and keep the 160 that will come with the box around incase I need it (or maybe put it on ebay...who knows). Looks like I'll be buying
these though
Because I'm gonna need an external monitor, I'm going to hold off on getting a Technet subscription (for now). I'm gonna need an HDMI port so that I can watch cable TV too. (for the price I'm spending on a monitor...I might as well...
) After I make up for that cost, I'll get a Technet subscription, along with 2 more 250GB drives to finish off my 4 drives.
What I will do compensate for lack of RAID is get a disk imaging solution like Ghost or Acronis and put the images of the host OS on my external USB terrabyte drive. I will also buy at least one or two extra drives just to keep around in case one dies. (Poor man's RAID...
).
So what do you guys think? I have time before I pull the trigger, but this is pretty much one less thing to worry about. Did I forget anything, hardware (or even software)-wise? While I'm waiting for my Technet subscription, I can always use Dreamspark to get started on Standard Windows Server 2008 R2 (I'll have to do that anyway to test the hardware and make sure stuff is ok and then go Enterprise via TechNet when the money is right again. The current hardware after all is said and done will come out to $755 (not including the monitor). That's just the server, 2x4GB RAM, and 2x250GB drives. I can even borrow (yes, REALLY borrow) a monitor from work until I procure my own with the HDMI inputs...
.
I'm just finally glad I am back to doing this kinda thing now. Yeah, sure, I should've (and could've) built one from scratch, but after looking at all those motherboards, cpus, cases, etc, my money and time was better spent on just creating the VM environment and setting up the virtual infrastructure. I probably won't even start that until I get Technet. (No sense in doing all that twice...lmao).
