Desktop Upgrade / Server Build

Danger781

Hey all,

I've been tinkering with the idea of building my own ESXi home server over the last few weeks. Either that or investing in something like a synology.

What I would use the server for:

• Plex Server VM
• FreeNAS VM
• Ubuntu VM for development work
• Potential for other VMs (Learning, Hosting, whatever..)

I'm not sure what I'm going to need to make this a reality - Server components or otherwise. I realise this will be expensive to get off the ground so I figured if I am investing money in it I might as well consider swapping out some of the parts in my desktop and investing it in there instead.

Desktop build:

• Fractal Design Define R4 Case
• M5A99FX PRO R2.0 motherboard
• AMD AM3+ FX-8350 CPU w/ aftermarket cooler
• 16GB DDR3 1333Mhz RAM
• SLI GTX 970s
• 2 x 120GB SSD
• 1 x 1TB HDD
• 3 x 1TB External HDD
• Seasonic M12II Bronze 850W PSU

Other hardware

• Old notebook sized laptop running Windows XP
• Old Desktop which my parents use
• Broken Chromebook :pac:

Regardless of whether or not I am swapping anything out I need to replace my PSU I think. Pretty sure the bearing on the fan is gone as it is clicking when spinning. This noise comes and goes. It happened all day yesterday but today it's fine for example.

Budget
Don't really have one thought out. I don't mind investing in something if I think it's worth it so I guess this post is more of a learning experience to get an idea on how much I need to set aside. Money isn't the primary concern at the moment - I can set a budget later.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

Are the 3 x 1TB hard disk going in some sort of RAID? And will the drives be 2.5 inch or 3.5? Why not 1 x 3TB hard disk?

Danger781

Ezequiel Chilly Herd wrote: »

Are the 3 x 1TB hard disk going in some sort of RAID? And will the drives be 2.5 inch or 3.5? Why not 1 x 3TB hard disk?

No they won't. Two are portable drives and the other is in an enclosure that won't open without breaking it. They're just drives I have collected over the years.

Cuddlesworth

Bump up the Ram to 32 and turn your current desktop into a headed ESXI build? Or just run workstation/virtualbox on it. It would be the cheapest option.

Are you planning on running the server 24/7?

Danger781

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Bump up the Ram to 32 and turn your current desktop into a headed ESXI build? Or just run workstation/virtualbox on it. It would be the cheapest option.

Are you planning on running the server 24/7?

That's actually exactly the idea I was considering but didn't know what this type of setup was called! Going to look into this tonight. My one concern would be the latency when playing games. Specifically CS:GO as any added latency could be detrimental.

Yeah eventually it would be on 24/7 when I get everything up and running.

Danger781

Danger781 wrote: »

That's actually exactly the idea I was considering but didn't know what this type of setup was called! Going to look into this tonight. My one concern would be the latency when playing games. Specifically CS:GO as any added latency could be detrimental.

Yeah eventually it would be on 24/7 when I get everything up and running.

Seems ESXi has some issues with passthrough on Nvidia cards.. Gonna need to spend more time looking into this..

Cuddlesworth

Danger781 wrote: »

Seems ESXi has some issues with passthrough on Nvidia cards.. Gonna need to spend more time looking into this..

I wasn't aware of that since I run a AMD card but it certainly looks like Nvidia are playing the asshole again. One of the many reasons I won't buy their cards.

Hyper-V is out for gaming, murders performance. Headed ESXI has no discernible difference that I can see, you can lock out cores and ram for the main OS. I don't run too many VM's alongside my main OS and I have a lot of cores to play with myself. No idea about Xenserver.

For a 24/7 low power setup I would look at something like the Avoton Intel boards. All in all I could see it setting you back 600 with 32 gigs of ram and some theft from your current setup.

If your not overtly concerned about power usage and noise, I'd just grab any build on this forum, pull the GFX and bump up the ram hopefully to 32, although it completley depends on where you are going with this in the end. You can easily run up to 10-12 VM's off a single SSD and quad core I5 at the end of the day. The beauty of decent IOPS and modern OS's that don't really do much at idle.

Regardless of what you intend to do, there is nothing stopping you from using virtualbox and setting up any VM's now. You can export/convert them later when required. Your current system can more then handle a couple of sub OS's running.

Danger781

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I wasn't aware of that since I run a AMD card but it certainly looks like Nvidia are playing the asshole again. One of the many reasons I won't buy their cards.

Hyper-V is out for gaming, murders performance. Headed ESXI has no discernible difference that I can see, you can lock out cores and ram for the main OS. I don't run too many VM's alongside my main OS and I have a lot of cores to play with myself. No idea about Xenserver.

For a 24/7 low power setup I would look at something like the Avoton Intel boards. All in all I could see it setting you back 600 with 32 gigs of ram and some theft from your current setup.

If your not overtly concerned about power usage and noise, I'd just grab any build on this forum, pull the GFX and bump up the ram hopefully to 32, although it completley depends on where you are going with this in the end. You can easily run up to 10-12 VM's off a single SSD and quad core I5 at the end of the day. The beauty of decent IOPS and modern OS's that don't really do much at idle.

Regardless of what you intend to do, there is nothing stopping you from using virtualbox and setting up any VM's now. You can export/convert them later when required. Your current system can more then handle a couple of sub OS's running.

Yeah I've been digging around the last few days and the sheer amount of information I've consumed is mad. /r/homelab and /r/homeserver are fantastic resources for picking up tidbits of information. When the idea of a home server came to mind I barely knew was ESXi was and now I've realised that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hypervisors alone. Proxmox, Hyper-V, KVM, XenServer.. I want to try them all

While I have learned a lot of the last few days I am conflicted on how to proceed. This started off as a learning experience because I knew very little about ESXi and considering I encounter it at work frequently it would be useful to learn more about it. Then I realised all the possibilities of virtualisation and got the idea of setting up a gaming VM with GPU passthrough as well as the multitude of other ideas I have.. However that would mean going with a KVM setup which goes against my original idea of learning more about ESXi.

So as it stands this leaves me with two options. I can proceed with ESXi on a standalone server which will set me back a few hundred on equipment, or go with the KVM option go through the effort of trying to forcefully enable GPU passthrough and run everything on the one server. The latter sounds more appealing to my inner-geek but I do wonder if it is worth the effort..

Cuddlesworth

Danger781 wrote: »

The latter sounds more appealing to my inner-geek but I do wonder if it is worth the effort..

Probably not to be honest, plus its unusual to have any real need to run a server 24/7 in your home. You should really start with Vmware workstation, you can nest ESXI within it. At 32gigs and a large SSD, you could easily run 3 ESXI hosts, Vcenter and a iscsi /NFS host plus a bunch of other OS's within Windows when you want them. Pick up a Synology for the 24/7 stuff.

Danger781

Had a spare SSD not being used so figured I'd install Debian with the intention of having KVM or Proxmox on top. This was installed on my Kingston drive. I have Windows 8.1 in my Crucial Drive. In my BIOS no matter which drive I boot to it brings up the GRUB menu with the Debian option. No mention of Windows.

I have mounted the crucial drive in Debian to /windows. Tried running os-prober and update-grub to no avail. What can I do now? Will I need to manually update GRUB to allow me to choose Windows at startup? Didn't think this would be an issue when installing to separate drives.. Any help would be appreciated as I have no idea how to proceed from here.

Cuddlesworth

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2176273&p=12800489#post12800489

Dual booting looks to be a a bit of a mess. And yet they say Linux is easy.

If you pull the Kingston drive, does Windows boot?

deceit

Have any of you tried gaming from an esxi VM with gpu passthrough?
I have an esxi server with 136gb ram and two 6/12 cpu's. I might give this a go but would the mouse input accuracy not affect gaming in vm's?

Danger781

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2176273&p=12800489#post12800489

Dual booting looks to be a a bit of a mess. And yet they say Linux is easy.

If you pull the Kingston drive, does Windows boot?

Cheers seems to be plenty of info in that link. Will look into it now.

deceit wrote: »

Have any of you tried gaming from an esxi VM with gpu passthrough?
I have an esxi server with 136gb ram and two 6/12 cpu's. I might give this a go but would the mouse input accuracy not affect gaming in vm's?

Nope! ESXi isn't an option for me if I intend on gaming since Nvidia doesn't play nice. Will be going with KVM but it should give me the same result. Will let you know if / when I get up and running.

Danger781

I have now made the situation much worse by attempting to follow the info above. Can't remember exactly what I did other than disable CSM (Compatibility Support) but now I'm booting into a blank screen. Tried pushing F2 during POST to access the BIOS but doesn't help. Asus have a DirectKey button on the mobo for booting into the BIOS which is quite cool, but it is also bringing me to a black screen.

This has been nothing but problems so far. First off my USB stuck decided to make itself read only and write protected so I couldn't use it. Using DISKPART was no use so I tried to fix it in Linux VM which partially it solved through repairing the file system, then going back to Windows and running DISKPART Clean.

Then got Debian installed but can't boot Windows. Now can't boot at all. One step forward 12 steps back. Sake.

Danger781

Resest the CMOS which allowed me back into the BIOS. While I had the case open I figured I would just disconnect the Debian SSD to see if I could force it into Windows. However now I'm getting 'Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot device and press a key'. Looks like a I've found the problem.. Now to find a solution..

Cuddlesworth

deceit wrote: »

Have any of you tried gaming from an esxi VM with gpu passthrough?
I have an esxi server with 136gb ram and two 6/12 cpu's. I might give this a go but would the mouse input accuracy not affect gaming in vm's?

GPU passthrough uses the output ports. So no lag really. Although dual CPU and tons of ram are not really gaming effective.

Cuddlesworth

Danger781 wrote: »

Resest the CMOS which allowed me back into the BIOS. While I had the case open I figured I would just disconnect the Debian SSD to see if I could force it into Windows. However now I'm getting 'Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot device and press a key'. Looks like a I've found the problem.. Now to find a solution..

Honest answer. It sounds like you have overwrote the Windows Master boot records on the crucial drive, with the Linux install on the Kingston drive. You can't boot into windows and you can't boot into Linux without both drives connected. I'm not really the person for this though, I don't dual boot. Creates more problems then it fixes.

Danger781

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Honest answer. It sounds like you have overwrote the Windows Master boot records on the crucial drive, with the Linux install on the Kingston drive. You can't boot into windows and you can't boot into Linux without both drives connected. I'm not really the person for this though, I don't dual boot. Creates more problems then it fixes.

Seems that way but I have no idea how I managed to do that. I don't remember choosing the Crucial drive at any point during the Debian install, unless I did so without realising or perhaps the guided install did it automatically. Would like to know for future reference..

Anyway what I've done since is put Windows 8 on a bootable USB to attempt a startup repair. No dice. Brought up DISKPART to ensure the partition was active and it is. So I think the next step from here is to try the 'Refresh' option in the installation menu for Windows 8, and failing that a full reinstall. Just backing up the contents of my SSD to my internal HDD. On that note, today has made me appreciate the importance of backups. If I lost the contents of my crucial drive I would've lost about a month of dev work on a website from my Ubuntu VM.. I need to learn how to use git

Danger781

So sticking with the current trend of one step forward two steps back - I tried running the refresh option in the Windows 8 installation from the USB but I'm getting an error saying the drive is locked. The Read Only attribute is not set, but a bit of googling leads me to believe that this is down to having an issue with the MBR on Windows. So in my attempt to fix it I tried running a bootrec /fixmbr on the disk. I'm no longer getting the 'Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot device and press a key'. Instead I'm getting a blinking cursor so I don't really know if I've made progress or gone backwards.. On top of that I also accidentally ran the /FixMBR on the USB stick and it wouldn't boot anymore.. oops So currently recreating the USB stick again and going to attempt a bootrec /RebuildBCD on the correct drive this time..

Not really how I planned on spending my day off

Danger781

I've never been so happy to see that Windows logo After booting Windows from the bootable USB I ran startup repair a few more times even though each time it told it failed. Then:
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /redbuildbcd

At this point the rebuildbcd failed to add the windows entry to the MBR. Went back into DISKPART, set the partition as active again. Restarted and got a new error about failing to read the boot configuration table. Went through another 1 or 2 startup repairs and voila, booted. Except.. I'm convinced I'm running off the backup I made to my internal HDD. It feels more sluggish, half my programs are missing, and the UI keeps going blank for a second then returning. Even though everywhere I look seems to indicate I'm on C. Not really sure where to look to confirm.

Either way, actual progress!

Danger781

Danger781 wrote: »

I'm convinced I'm running off the backup I made to my internal HDD. It feels more sluggish, half my programs are missing, and the UI keeps going blank for a second then returning. Even though everywhere I look seems to indicate I'm on C. Not really sure where to look to confirm.

My suspicions were correct.. disconnected the HDD, rebooted and now everything is back to normal. Now just need to confirm I can still get into Debian and I'll be happy.. Don't know why I'm still updating this thread, guess I find it therapeutic to run run through everything I did or rant a little bit.. :pac:

Cuddlesworth

Danger781 wrote: »

I need to learn how to use git

At worst, start working out of a google drive/skydrive directory so it backs up automatically.