System consolidation (gaming + server)

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phendric

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I've got a couple of fairly high-powered machines sucking power and generating heat in my fairly small apartment, and would like to explore the possibilities of consolidating the two machines into one.

-Specs, 1st machine: Intel i7-3930k, 16 GB 1600 RAM, OS installed on 128 GB SSD with data spread across multiple hard disks, dual Radeon 7970 GPUs, tri-monitor (3x 1920x1080) configuration, Windows 7 Pro.
-Purpose, 1st machine: gaming, general media consumption, Handbrake transcoding.

-Specs, 2nd machine: Intel i7-920, 9 GB 1066 RAM, OS installed on 500 GB hard drive, with data & backups stored on separate hard disks, including a couple of disks in a storage space, headless (ie, no monitor, keyboard or mouse), dual NIC, running Windows Server 2012 Essentials
-Purpose, 2nd machine: home server - automated backups, media server, real-time transcoding & media streaming, web server for personal web page, soon-to-be email server.

Windows Server OSs are generally really bad for gaming, and Windows 7/8 is generally bad for automated backups and web serving, which means I don't want to consolidate to a single box with a single OS for all my needs.

Instead, I'd like to explore what I see as my only other alternative - virtualization. What are the things I should be thinking about if I want to consider running both Windows Server and Windows 7 under a hypervisor like Hyper-V Server? Are there any obvious disadvantages?

If virtualization turns out to not be an acceptable solution, the other option I'm looking at is leaving everything except the server shut down during the hot daytime hours.

Feedback?
 
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IInuyasha74
Well I haven't messed with virtual PC's for a year or two, but at the time they were really buggy, and the performance they gave was terrible compared to even a small system. You can try it if you would like, but I would personally go a different route with it.

These are the options I would consider, excluding the obvious one of turning off the server during the day.

1. Just use Windows 7. This is what I would do honestly, because it works fine for a media server/transcoder. I have used mine for that a few times. Get 3rd party programs not from Windows to run your webserver, email server, and do your backups on Windows 7. Windows 7 may lack some functions of a server by default, but programs can emulate them.

2. Dual boot. I am not...
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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May 1, 2013
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Well I haven't messed with virtual PC's for a year or two, but at the time they were really buggy, and the performance they gave was terrible compared to even a small system. You can try it if you would like, but I would personally go a different route with it.

These are the options I would consider, excluding the obvious one of turning off the server during the day.

1. Just use Windows 7. This is what I would do honestly, because it works fine for a media server/transcoder. I have used mine for that a few times. Get 3rd party programs not from Windows to run your webserver, email server, and do your backups on Windows 7. Windows 7 may lack some functions of a server by default, but programs can emulate them.

2. Dual boot. I am not sure what you are sending Media to since you only have two systems, but you could put the HDD's from the server in the other system. Install a 2nd OS on the newly added HDD and boot to it if you want to do this other stuff. The drive and all of its data is still accessible by the main system, and is there if you need it in server form. This means you would only have your webserver and email server available when in the 2nd installation but if your server being off is the alternative, its the same difference really.

3. This would honestly be the 2nd thing I wold look into, but it may cost a little so I list it as 3rd. Sell off the parts to your server instead of having this big power machine, and replace it with different parts. Webserver doesn't need a lot of power, so pick up a motherboard, CPU, and PSU that consume very little power and put off very little heat. Using a low power Ivy Bridge Pentium would probably perform perfectly and the whole system would probably barely use 125w of power even at load and so your heat put off would be greatly reduced.
 
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phendric

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I have very little experience with virtual machines, other than using VirtualBox to run a low-performance Linux distro under Windows 7. My lack of experience is one of the reasons I started this thread - how good is virtualization technology these days, in terms of performance?



Subsonic runs on Windows 7 just fine, and works great for HTTP streaming of music. Window Server's media sharing implementation works pretty well for DNLA-based streaming of videos - better than Plex Media Server, at least. I'm not aware of a backup/restore program that makes it nearly as simple/easy as Windows Home Server (aka Server Essentials 2012) to do automated backups and restores. As far as a web server, I don't know what's available for Windows 7.



I didn't say that I only have 2 systems, but just that I want to consolidate 2 systems. I have a 3rd desktop that's pretty much my wife's, 2 laptops that I and my kids use, and a couple of iPads that I stream music and movies to. Plenty of devices being used throughout the day...



I've thought about a low-powered server setup, but the real-time transcoding engine for media streaming, I've read, requires some hefty hardware...
 
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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I was just using VirtuBox too I think. Last time I did it was last summer I think, and it was the latest version but it still had issues. My i3-3225 machine isn't a real powerful system compared to yours, but it crawled and had countless issues with Windows 98SE and Windows XP running on it. I don't know a ton about them and that might be my issue, but I tried for over a week messing with them and still had lots of trouble.

You will know a lot more about servers than me in honest. I tried running a Media Server called Tversity on my system and liked it really well. It worked alright but had some odd issues. Most of it was the program I think though. The best I ever got it running was when I was out at Walmart one night and I streamed a TV show that was being transcoded on my PC perfectly without issue, but some computers at home on the interior network had issues loading from it. So I will have to try those out. What media server program you think is best?
As for Webpage hosting, I have heard there is an Apachi program that works pretty well, and for backup I always used Norton Ghost, but I don't do a lot of backups. Nero Back IT Up is supposed to be good. This isn't really my area of expertise though.

Oh sorry about that, I was doing several things at once and didn't think while typing that bit. Server must be working well though if you are running data to all those devices.

Real-time transcoding can take quite a powerful hit on the performance side, but a low end CPU dedicated to the task shouldn't have much trouble. If you had a program for doing it that let you use Intel Quick-Sync it would be no problem what so ever. I don't know if there is one though, but as I said my i3-3225 CPU was able to do it fine, and it converts videos while playing games and numerous other things at the same time just fine. Given how much you are planning to do on the system it is probably best you use an i3 though.

Not sure how up you are on lower-end hardware, but the i3-3225 has the quick sync feature, and hyperthreading which will be important with how much you are doing. All of them come at 3.3Ghz but with a decent motherboard that lets you change the FSB you can push it up to 3.5 easily. I also have mine extremely undervolted. I don't know exactly how much, but my CPU voltage offset is at -.65 and has been for like 8 months.
 
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