[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] So what kind of test rig do you have? - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA
Sun, May 29 2011 0:47 bradley

So what kind of test rig do you have?

So as a fyi the test I'm doing on Multipoint isn't really a good test, it's just a proof of concept.  Why do I say that?  Because it's in a hyperV server and not on real hardware.

To really see Multipoint shine you have to see it on real hardware.

http://www.youtube.com/user/msmultipoint#p/u/8/32GQAUBTKps

But when you want to play/test/just get an idea of how software works, stick it in a HyperV or vmware.  In this case you ultimately want this on real iron, not in a HyperV to get the best results.

You could also have the Multipoint act as the HyperV host (but I'll admit when I first went - oh how cool - I wasn't thinking of how if you domain join the MultiPoint to the SBS you will have a tough time with it being the host of a sbs domain.)

So when you are learning - I'd strongly suggest looking to have some sort of virtualization platform to test and play.

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# re: So what kind of test rig do you have?

Sunday, May 29, 2011 11:37 AM by Gwen

What kind of hardware are you using for your hyper-v test machine?

I'm looking into buying a simple all in one AMD board with 8GB ram (I am on a tight budget) and several smaller disks (to avoid disk io problems when running multiple vm's).

Right now I'm using an older mac pro (2006)... with 6GB RAM running Hyper-V :D But memory prices for a machine of that age are a tad high... Don't feel like investing in something that's been out of warranty for a while as well.

To be honest, most of the time the cpu is sitting there, idling... So I don't think I need a very strong cpu for my dedicated virtual lab machine.

# re: So what kind of test rig do you have?

Sunday, May 29, 2011 1:42 PM by bradley

That 8 gig HP microserver would be a candidate.  Max out the ram, and the unit makes it easy to add/remove hard drives.

You don't have to have all machines up and running at the same time, just for testing and proof of concept.

# re: So what kind of test rig do you have?

Monday, May 30, 2011 3:36 AM by Tijs VdB

At home:

Vmware Workstation 7.1 on a Windows 7 Enterprise with following hardware: i5-760 processor with 8 GB DDR3 memory, motherboard with 2 nics. Works fine for most smaller setups. :)

At work:

HP DL380G5 running ESXi 4.1. (14 GB memory, 5x146GB 2,5" 10k rpm sas disks in RAID5, Xeon processor). Not the newest machine, but it works quite well. :)

What do you use?

Kind regards,

Tijs VdB

# @Gwen

Monday, May 30, 2011 3:35 PM by Joe Raby

You can't go wrong with AMD systems, as they all have hardware VT.  If it's just for testing, any Athlon II quad-core is a good option.  Most motherboards with 880/890 chipsets and 4 RAM slots will support 16GB of RAM.  Mind you, that's not ECC RAM, so make sure you use real server hardware for a production machine okay?

I like Supermicro Opteron 4100 boards in Micro ATX form factor as they allow for tower ("pedestal" in server-talk) builds that can be built with easy-to-obtain, off-the-shelf components.

Also, if you use Server 2008 R2 SP1, you will get Dynamic Memory support, so you will likely be able to squeeze a bit more efficiency from your RAM usage.  I loaded up a 4GB Hyper-V Server R2 SP1 machine and was able to load 2 instances of Win7(one 32-bit and one 64-bit) and 1 instance of Vista, all at the same time - to create DaRT ISO's for each Windows version.  Disk activity was the biggest slowdown, since they were all running from a single 500GB 5400RPM 2.5" WD Blue drive (a laptop drive).  Without Dynamic Memory, I would've maybe been able to eek out 2 at a time....maybe....