On Fri, 2009-05-01 at 11:42 +0100, Virginian wrote: > Thanks Jonathon, that's very informative and some very good ideas. > > I like the idea of the 10K RPM disks, I will definitely read up on those. Well worth it, make a big difference to running any virtualization solution. > > Also, I had been thinking of quad core CPU's too, something in a small form > factor or as you say even laptop size. What I am looking for is (ideally) > Have you looked at the ZOTAC GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi Mini-ITX board? It is a mini-ITX board that takes a up to a Core2 Extreme with 8GB of RAM, a 1Gbps Ethernet adaptor. No FireWire, but does have a PCI-E x16 slot, so you could add an adaptor in. You might even be able to squeeze two of these with two drives into the Travla C147 Dual Mini-ITX rackmount case. > 2 physical machines > > 1 x Quad Core CPU with Intel Virtualization (for KVM) > 4GB RAM More RAM, if you want to do virtualization this is what limits the number of guests more than anything. I would say 8GB is a minimum. > External shared storage, anything from 250GB upwards (I like the idea of > 2.5" disks perhaps two in RAID 1) > The VelociRaptor is a 2.5" SATA drive, under 10W a drive. I upgraded my workstation to the old 150GB Raptor drives a couple years back and it made a big difference when running lots of guests on VMware workstations. > The above would give me plenty of horse power to run quite a few guests and > enable me to set up a physical and virtual cluster. If I can get the whole > lot for under 400W I will be more than pleased. At present my two DL 380's > run at 500W approximately as does the MSA 500 disk array. Cutting my power > consumptiion by nearly 75% definitely appeals!! Take a look at the picoPSU power supplies. They are small and efficient, and pick the right one (for your application the M3) and you can do a UPS direct from a lead acid battery in the form of a battery backed power supply. Much more frugal than a normal UPS. Even if you don't want a UPS, one step down from mains to a beefy 12V, is more efficient. > Anybody else got any example of a lower power set up for home use? I have doing it for some time, but on VIA and now Atom boards. My current setup has a power draw *under* 30W at the wall plug, for which I get a 1.2GHz Via C7 with 1GB RAM, with a PCI ADSL card, 1GbE, 100GB of RAID-1 7200RPM, WiFi and with a battery backed PSU. It's role is a home file server, come ADSL gateway, come Wireless access point. I am looking at a new setup which will have an Atom N330 with 2GB of RAM, and a pair of 300GB VelociRaptors and a pair of 2TB 3.5" drives, cause I want to ditch the external firewire drives. The power budget for this will be under 50W and I will reuse the battery backed PSU. I would have thought that under 300W would easily be achievable using desktop processors. If 4GB of RAM is definitely enough, then you could go Socket P, pick one of a range of mini-ITX boards and go under 150W, possibly 100W. However this will bump the cost up because you are buying laptop parts. JAB. -- Jonathan A. Buzzard Tel: +441382-386998 Storage Administrator, College of Life Sciences University of Dundee, DD1 5EH -- Linux-cluster mailing list Linux-cluster@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-cluster
