'Väderfölne'

[Eiktyrner]

Hey everyone, I've been lurking here for a while now and figured it was time to post my first thread.

I'm building this workstation (with an odd name for most people ) for work, so it will be used mostly for programming, R&D, 3D and as a lab computer for new things that I would like to try out.

The specs will be:
Xeon E3-1230
Asus P8B WS
8GB of Kingston ECC RAM (will expand to 16 if needed)

What I would like to ask is mostly software related as I have all the hardware figured out.
Basically I'm wondering what you guys think is the best approach.
Should I just install Windows 7 and run lab VMs in Vmware Workstation? Or is there any point in having the main OS virtual also? Like running ESXi on the machine? I guess that would mean I need sort of a thin client to connect to my main OS running on ESXi right? It seems like it's over complicating things, but if there is a valid point in doing so, I'm all for it.
Would be awesome to try running Win 7 on ESXi and then using a laptop as a thin client just for the fun of it. Is it even remotely possible that I get decent speed by doing that? 3D in Maya & Motionbuilder might be a problem though...

Best,
Eiktyrner


Edit: I just figured this might be in the wrong section of the forum? Crap..

 

[Patrick]

Let me know where you would want to move it to if you do (although we now expect pics when you get this running )

I think this really depends on what you want to "try". Using something like virtualbox with Windows 7 as the host OS usually works well since it seems like you really need this box to do programming/ 3D rendering not run the VMs. I may be wrong here.

 

[Eiktyrner]

The thread can stay here, I'll use it as a show-off/questions thread then

To start with, I would actually like to try my crazy idea about running ESXi and a "thin" client to the guest OS. Not sure how that's going to work out though...

But you are correct, it will be mainly used for programming and 3D so i'll just run virtualbox or vmware on a Win 7 installation. It will probably function as a lab where I try things and do the basic setup and then move it over to my virtualization cluster once it's up and running. That way I can test new software's and solutions without having to mess with the clusters straight away...