x79 build verification pls

[StickyS]

some of the Cisco VM's eat up about 8 gigs of ram. I need all the ram i can get.

Hmmm...fair enough. I have no personal experience with X79, but there are a FEW builds in the sections down below. X79 does "work", but a lot of features won't...do your research and read :

http://www.tonymacx86.com/golden-builds/

http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-builds/

Look for X79 builds and read the thread.

 

[DBP]

Which VM software do you use?
The Cisco VMs: they don't generate a lot of GUI traffic do they?
If you can't get Vt-x running on an X79 board (hmmm, I'll need to check that for another project) I would at least check out the options for building a pair of 32 GB Z77 systems. One to be the workstation plus some VMs, and the other to essentially be a VM server.

The Z77 wouldn't need the GT 640 (HD4000 to drive 2-3 monitors depending on board). The VM server could be headless (hopefully there's a 2nd input on one of your monitors so you can access the BIOS). This machine could run OS X, VMware ESXi ($$), or XenServer.
I run a bunch of each of these, and while "mine" are in a datacenter there's no reason you couldn't have one at your desk with a private gigabit interconnect.

On my OS X workstation I use VirtualBox to run some Linux VMs, and a Win7 VM which runs the clients to manage ESXi and Xen servers/VMs. VirtualBox and Xen are free. For just a couple of remote VMs you could just run OS X and VirtualBox on the "server", although when you have an active ScreenSharing connection to an OS X machine it does chew some CPU on the target machine.

Lots of possibilities there. The Z77 systems have a price advantage, and some boards come with a second LAN which you can use to interconnect virtual network segments between the hosts if that helps. Mind you, for some people this might be just waaaay too complex.

 

[DATADORK]

DBP - Thanks for chiming in.. btw.. my good vs bad BSOD post was all in good humor.


1. I have access to ESXi
2. I have access to Workstation9
3. I dont have the personal budget for 2 PC's lol

My objective was to build out a beefy workstation @ work and have it as a tax write off lol. In all honesty, it will be used for work purposes. I will be running Cisco Unified communications on it (VM'd), amongst other VMs to compliment a virtual voice network that willl have physical resources in my office LAB. I do a lot of project and support work and i need something right next to me a lot of times to figure things out, rather than open a book or go to my R&D dept google.com ... sometimes a customer will ask me a what if question and i would like to quickly give a realistic response.. hence my personal workstation running a ton of real world apps.

Given the above, I wanted to really get into Apple this time round as a luxury while having all my business apps open and running in the background.

I did think about running ESXi as the thought came to mind last night lol.. I have yet to find out how to do this but it sound like its only compatible with Z77, right? if thats so, then darn it again. I really would like to have the addtion 32 gigs of ram. I can live with 4 cores but the ram is going to be something hard to live without as applications becomes more resource intensive (specially Cisco) the additional ram will def come into play in the following years.

I guess if i have to give up a hackMac for now, i will and hopefully the x79 platform will be support in the future.

Edit... if i do go with x79 (80%) then i will def give it a shot with OSX and see what really works when it comes to the virtual space.

Thoughts?

 

[DBP]

3. I dont have the personal budget for 2 PC's lol

I was merely suggesting that you do a price comparison of one X79 system vs two Z77 systems (appropriately configured of course). You might find the price differential is smaller than the number you first thought of.

Of course, the trick is then to put it on the books as one "system" for tax porpoises (or for getting management to sign off on it). I'm not sure how many cases there are out there which can house two motherboards, but I'm sure you can get creative.
EDIT: I blame you for me now looking at Lian Li PC-D8000 cases and thinking about what would be required to mod one for two PSUs and two boards.

 

[DATADORK]

so maybe a mac mini + a beefy 77 vm box.. pondering. =)