nixCraft

Greetings all,

I am planning on building a new server to run OpenSuSE with XEN, all I need is RAID 5, working NIC and decent video.
Anyone have good experience with some boards from brands like ASUS and MSI?
Any tips/advice much appreciated.

Usually, server board are used. Asus and MSI are for Desktop usage only. Do you wanna build server grade system or server with desktop grade hardware? There will be good price difference. Also, Hardware RAID 10 is suggested for XEN / Vmware for performance and safety.

On a other hand I'm using Intel S975XBX2 Workstation, Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz, Nvida 8600 GT, 500GB x 3 Software RAID 5 for my home system which act as server and development station for me.

__________________
Vivek Gite
Linux Evangelist
Be proud RHEL user, and let the world know about your enterprise choices! Join RedHat user group.
Always use CODE tags for posting system output and commands!
Do you run a Linux? Let's face it, you need help

Well this is for private usage, just to test several OS's releases etc.
No need for expensive hardware (unless professional working enviroment with big budget). Also to test beta versions of zabbix server/agent on several linux/bsd distro's

This is what I ended up buying and building:
AMD Phenom quad core
8 GB memory
ATI HD 4650 saphire 1 GB
MSI K9A2 CF-F

All hardware is supported, software raid as well.

I am running OpenSuSE 11.1 with vmware server (free edition).
Very pleased with the performance so far

Nice system. VMWare is good, but you can also try out xen.

__________________
Vivek Gite
Linux Evangelist
Be proud RHEL user, and let the world know about your enterprise choices! Join RedHat user group.
Always use CODE tags for posting system output and commands!
Do you run a Linux? Let's face it, you need help

I tried XEN at first, installing in opensuse 11.1 went without any issues, untill I tried creating a virtual machine, many errors and no answers to be found so I gave up on it.