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.
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 😀 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.
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.
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
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….