The Cloud and you. Are you ready?

[Archer]

Conclusion:
So you can use the cloud at home. Will it help you? It can if you let it. Any solution that allows you to save money on hardware, increase data security, allows more flexibility and reduces your carbon footprint is a winning solution.
Do you have a small business that can use something based on your current server and user hardware? Are you currently feeding 10+ systems eating 100-200 watts each plus a file server eating 100-300 watts can add up to over 3500 dollars a year. By having a solution set up that uses virtualization and a cloud computing model (server based processing, software and storage) that 3500 dollars drops by 2/3 or more. And your hardware upkeep is dramatically reduced as well.
Total system costs can drop as low as $150-250 each + KB/Mouse/Monitor after the initial implementation. There are no hard drives to worry about backing up, no software upkeep to bother with, less than five minutes to add a new desktop (so you can put people to work immediately), have more control of what is done on the individual systems, and lower the heat output of each system which reduces cooling costs.
The Cloud or at least virtualized computing is the future. The future can be now. It is not worth it in all cases but perhaps now you will have a better idea about where you are and where you want to be.

http://www.techreaction.net/2011/11/24/small-office-the-home-the-private-cloud-and-you/

Well here I will begin my work on converting my home networks int a Home Cloud. I really want to use the Microsoft solutions but I am just not sure about it yet. I want to stay away from Linux because it is not user friendly and by the time I got through explaining things I would have arthritis.

My first step is the server. I am leaning toward an AMD FX but part of the reason for that is the SATA III support. I am also thinking raid 5 and an eventual AMD video card for remote fx.

thoughts?

[BoT]

i can see something along the lines of a FX-8120. these also offer better options for memory IMO

[Archer]

Yeah I was looking at the 8120 but honestly I may just repurpose some of my current stock for the inital setup. I have to take this a little slow because of the holidays. I think I will set up something soon to test things out. All of my systems are PXE bootable so that will not be a problem amyway.

[BoT]

would that also be the system that holds the VMs? what is PXR?

[Archer]

would that also be the system that holds the VMs? what is PXR?

PXE oops

Yeah this server will be the VM host and a dual or quad will be fine for testing.

[BoT]

I would at least opt for the quad. My experience showed that you can only effectivaley assign physical cores. So HT cores dont count.
You want to retain 2 cores for the server which will give you 2 VMs with single core on a quad core cpu.
Memory can be assigned dynamically.
Once you go into the final build, core and price wise you would be better off in the AMD camp but i have no idea what or if they support VT-x or VT-d or anything like it

[Archer]

AMD has their own standards (-x and -d) there is little support for the direct IO (-d) at the moment from MS.

Well my current server is an intel dual (no HT) but that will never do but I am looking at the HT factor simply as a booster to the VM server if I go Intel for this. I can use the real cores and have the HT for server duty to a point allowing the offload of resources from the cores operating the VMs.

[BoT]

what about OS. will you base it around MS server 2008 r2?

[Archer]

what about OS. will you base it around MS server 2008 r2?

I can and I would love to do that. It is easy to use and if I were building this from the ground up it would be a definate consideration. At the moment I am looking at all of my options. I really feel that with the RemoteFX functions Windows Server 2008 R2 would be best but I just cant see it for the home user at this point in time. I have been looking at the Multipoint server 2011 as a solution for the average non tech savy user. It is really awesome for GP use.

[BoT]

oh wow, i haven't even heard of that. i have to look into that a little bit.
i was also thinking Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 R2

[_Vi]

My question is, why do you need such a relatively powerful CPU?

[Archer]

I need to have 6 relatively fast clients. Speed is a secondary factor here as well.

I could have a dual core @ 6 GHZ or a X6 at one Ghz and the X6 would serve me better.

It is all about resources.

Do I need more than a dual core with 4 GB of memory and a single SATA II drive to hose six bare metal clients?

Well the minimum recomended memory for my VM is 512M so that will alocate 3GB (if I do not use dynamic) leaving one for the OS (server). This is not good so we need more memory.

We have one drive capable of a little over 100MBPS. This drive (the IO) is incapable of streaming 3 streams and getting other things done without stroking itself to death. It would be great if it were all office apps running but I am talking video streaming as well. Did I mention the server will also derve media?

A CPU only has so many resources. With a dual core the thing will not be able to keep up with the demands I would put on it.

[Neuromancer]

I just looked up multipoint server. It appears MS finally got around to doing that, Geez. I looked into that years ago, Linux was the only good option for it, although Betwin OS was available software wise, it cost as much as a new OS.

Going to have to take another peak at this. Would be great for my purposes.

[Archer]

Well when it gets published (Drew) I have some info on that and some other things. Nothing in any detail but...

It is more of an article explaining what it (Cloud) is, what you can do with it and it tries to help one examing weather or not they can use it.

EDIT: I am currently looking at the XEN setup: http://xen.org/files/XenCloud/guest.pdf

What I am looking for (because this is not only for me; its for anyone) are options, that are relatively easy to set up and I have not ruled out linux clients because they offer most everything the home user needs except games.

[BoT]

so, i just installed WMP2011 on a VM and it looks nice. it's some hybrid between server 2008 and win 7.
the desktop looks like win7 but i found RemoteFX support can be enabled. there are no other server roles can be enabled but it shows that it doesn't take as much as MS likes to make it seem like to enable RemoteFX.

i didn't actually connect any clients yet. it looks like you can use existing CALs but either way you will need CALs for every client you connect. another thing i look at was the thin client. there some decent ones from ncomputing. the L300 looks pretty good but is also not the cheapest in thin client standards. USB clients would be out of the question for me.

management of the system looks to be very simple and easily manageable but there is also no option for active directory or domain integration. just a few things to keep in mind.