[TriLUG] Ideas for Replacing Home Office Workhorse Computer?

[Ron Kelley via TriLUG]

Thanks.  So the use case is a pre-built server that runs VMWare for some VM workloads.  I have a couple of ideas I can share with you, but honestly, the best option would be a Supermicro X9 server with an e5-2680-v2 CPU and appropriate RAM/storage.  I have built a bunch of these servers for a local data center setup and even have some spare ones sitting in the garage.

Let me know if you are interested in some 1:1 time - we can probably get you into a system with minimal expense.  Just shoot me a uni-cast email...

-Ron



On 12/17/18 5:35 PM, Scott Chilcote wrote:

> Hi Ron,
>
> The servers I've had experience with were neither quiet nor cool.  If
> that's changed over the years, at least for some of them, it's good to
> hear and would like to know which ones.  I've built systems piecemeal,
> but I'm not out to do that this time.
>
> I want solid reliability and a reasonable amount of support. I work for
> a small company and wear far too many hats, so I'll spare everyone the
> detailed use case list.  The mac pro that I have would be spot-on, if
> it  continued to be supported by the manufacturer and vmware.  Having
> one that throttled down when the load is off would be a plus.
>
> Thanks,
>
>    Scott C.
>
>
> On 12/17/18 5:10 PM, Ron Kelley wrote:
>> Scott,
>>
>> What, exactly, is the use case here?  And, how much $$$ do you want to spend?
>>
>>  From your email, it seems you want a server that runs a number of VMs with little heat output.  That can easily be done on a semi-recent CPU (e5-2600 v2), 64G RAM, and a free hypervisor (VMware, Linux with KVM/LXD, etc).  Lots of options to choose from...
>>
>> -Ron
>>
>>
>>> On Dec 17, 2018, at 5:05 PM, Scott Chilcote via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> My home office computer is getting long in the tooth.  It's an
>>> all-aluminum mac pro from 2007, has eight 2.8 GHz cores, and has been
>>> upgraded over the years to 24 GB of memory and SSD drives.
>>>
>>> I use this box to run vmware guests with vmware fusion, and with as many
>>> as four running at the same time.  It has been great for this purpose,
>>> being wonderfully quiet and with scant evidence of bogging down.
>>>
>>> About the only thing that I'd knock is that it puts out significant
>>> heat.  Since my office is on the south side of our house, I needed a
>>> room AC to reduce operating the whole-house unit from May through September.
>>>
>>> Apple Corp decided that I'd owned this computer long enough in 2015,
>>> when they discontinued it from subsequent releases of MacOS.  VmWare
>>> soon followed suit, as their updates and releases no longer support the
>>> terminal version of the OS.
>>>
>>> The machine still worked fine until a couple of months ago, when it
>>> decided to start having random spontaneous reboots.  There haven't been
>>> that many yet, fewer than ten, but the writing's on the wall.  Guest
>>> OSes are not happy with having their power slammed repeatedly, and in
>>> particular those made by Microsoft.
>>>
>>> I've been doing a lot of thinking about what to replace this box with.
>>> I'm not in love with Apple by any means.  Their most recent incarnation
>>> of the Mac Pro is kind of old, and seems more appropriate for an art
>>> museum than a home office (as the meme says, change my mind! ;-)
>>>
>>> The machine I would like to get will be powerful and quiet, and not pour
>>> out a lot of heat when idling.  Some gaming-specific hardware comes
>>> close, but I don't have much use for the high end graphics or blue LEDs.
>>>
>>> I'm wondering if I need to buy a new vmware license to switch to another
>>> host operating system (for example, Linux).  I managed to get one of
>>> these guests to run on virtualbox once, on my ubuntu laptop.  It was not
>>> particularly reliable, and I had to reinstall it after it hung once or
>>> twice.  That was years ago, however.  It would be good to know if
>>> there's a virtual host for Linux that runs vmware guests reliably.
>>>
>>> If any LUGgers have experience with hardware and host OS setups that fit
>>> these objectives, please pass the word.
>>>
>>> Many thanks!
>>>
>>> Scott C.
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Scott Chilcote
>>> scottchilcote at ncrrbiz.com
>>> Cary, NC USA
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> This message was sent to: Ron Kelley <rkelleyrtp at gmail.com>
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