Virtualize or not? And if yes, how?

[znelbok]

I think you need to find a PC and run up ESXi and start experimenting with it with a few simple VM's. Get a feel for what is happening before trying to design the grand plan. That will give you more confidence in what you are doing and the decisions you are making.

If there is no spare machine then try VMWare Player (free) or Workstation. You can create VM's in player and then manually clone them. Workstation has a clone feature built in.

There is a converter utility that will convert a physical machine on the network into a VM.

You can migrate a Player/Workstation VM into ESXi easily as well. I do my creation/test in in workstation and then deploy to ESXi.

[IVB]

no spare machine. Tempted to pick this up for $500 so I have something to play on that might be useful later: http://www.ebay.com/itm/131676077928?_tr...EBIDX%3AIT

[SomeWhatLost]

From what I'm learning, I can pull up the VMs very quickly on another host. As in, within minutes.

that is true, even faster really depending on dependencies and such... ie if you have to pass through a particular card/device/etc that can be problematic if you dont have one on said machine... but in general VM's are great... it is wonderful times we live in...

If I tell you what I think you're telling me:
- Build a megaserver for both NAS & cpu/RAM

yes

- if I need more power, add another cpu/ram only server.

on a temporary basis, until you have time & funds to build/upgrade new super duper mega server...

Thing is, in that world I still need the older megaserver. Power costs are a big deal for me, I'd rather retire the old box. An extra 120W server costs $35/month just in electricity.

yes, but it would only be temporary...
and your constant whining about electricity $$$ is exactly why I say build just 1 box to do everything....

the Synology at its core is just a PC, sure it is dedicated NAS, but it has power supplies, ram, a uProcessor, etc...
same as your MEGA server...
power supplies, assuming a good high efficiency... are only about 80%, so for every power supply you are just pissing away 20% and getting no benefit from those inconvenienced electrons...
now add to that the uP probably is 1V or less, so that's another power supply on board, memory is 1.5V so yet another, each of those if you are lucky are 80% efficient... but they are probably worse...

so, for each additional box you add, no matter how "power efficient" they may be, you are pissing away a bunch of inconvenienced electrons... and not benefiting from it in any way... well, the heat generated may be of some use?

now add in the fact that CPU's need power just to run, not necessarily do anything yet, just the basic be up and running... same thing with the memory, and everything else in the box...

so for every additional box, and again regardless of how efficient they may be, you are wasting even more energy...

a 2 box solution will never be as power efficient as a single box solution (assuming you size it correctly for your actual needs... if you go way overboard, all bets are off..)

just for fun, my mega server is currently sitting at 112W, one of the Sage recording drives is asleep, the other is spun up, I am guessing it is recording 1 or more shows...
plex isn't doing anything, but it is running... all the array drives are currently spun up, maybe plex is doing a scan?
CQC is doing something, once every so often the CPU core it is bound to jumps to ~10%
unraid is displaying its web page, and just being unraid... nothing much going on there...
so lets say I wanted to be all energy efficient:
first, I would dump the revo SSD, partly because it is an unreliable PoS, but mostly because according to specs, it is 14.3W
so now my killer 8 core Xeon is humming along at 97.7W
now my dual redundant 1200W supplies are really cool,but I would bet at a 97.7W load they are maybe 50% efficient at best... so maybe my actual "real" load not counting the power supplies inefficiency is maybe 50W
so lets say, with a better matched 80% power supply, and ditching crappy Revo SSD, I would be at ~60W for a killer Xeon 8 Core Mega Server...
(obviously it would bounce up under heavy load..., but right now it is mostly somewhat idle, and I would call this a standard state for it I think?)

so anyway, how would you build a VM only server and separate Synology nas and have both of them under the same "mostly somewhat Idle, but most drives spun up" state and beat the (theoretical) ~ 60W of my one box?

Thats the reason to use Synology SHR, and NOT raid. From what i'm reading, its the same, plop the drives in and go.

cool

[IVB]

i'm having a hard time buying the 60W calculation of a single mega box. Synology runs at 25W idle.

This conversation does make me second guess buying a used box off eBay though, I just did a google search on a few of the dell dual xeons, spec sheets show a typical idle of 120W, load of a lot higher. Perhaps I even need to design & build a VM server to deal with power consumption.

[SomeWhatLost]

You are free to check my math.
My old unraid on the atom d525 was 30W
If it had been based off of the newer baytrail atom it probably would be similar to the synology
It is the VM"s that use all the power, but still how many electrons would a separate server use? Cause at the end of the day, that is what it is all about... 3 servers @ 50W each or one server with 3 VM's @ 120W?

[IVB]

It's not the math, it's whether reality will match the theory.

Btw which mobo and cpu are you using? I'm having a hell of a time finding a mobo/cpu/case combo that's got 8+ cores and isn't a power hog and fits in a normal priced case.

[SomeWhatLost]

It is a haswell, I will look it up when I am back at my pc... I think it is really only a 4 core+hyperthread
Mobile is a supermicro, I like supermicro...

But what is up with Intel and the xeons? Seems the newer ones have less and less cores and support less memory....
But the newer the xeon the better the power efficiency.

[IVB]

actually i was looking at the brand new ones out a few months ago. I found one, then looked for mobo's to go with it. The SSI size have awful reviews, the E-ATX ones (all supermicro) have multiple reviews that say that you need to drill your own holes as its not really a standard E-ATX.

I need at least 8 cores (or 4+hyper), but was researching a dual xeon mobo as I have a bad habit of learning something then exploding my needs. (ie, I just found that you can RDP via Chrome, I'm going to try RDP'ing from my kids chromebook later tonight). Not sure I can populate only one of the CPU slots, though.

Dual cpu *really* needs power efficiency though.

[jkmonroe]

eh?

the latest Xeon D's are 16 core (32 logical) at 45W TDP.

i would couple the Synology 1815 (60W under load) with the Xeon D-1540 (66W under load). the D-1540 is 8 core (16 logical) and should be more than enough power to handle all tasks discussed in this thread.

BTW, you could quite easily run 25-30 virtual desktops on a single D-1571/7 (16 core). they won't be CAD workstations, but more than enough for task work like Office/Email/WWW.

[jkmonroe]

if you ever want to go with one box, this is the way to do it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...24G43J4377