A great Hyper-V blog here at Accentient Blog.
I was searching around for information on setting up Hyper-V and I ran across this blog, which has some great instructions for getting started. Including a 3 part series on Using 64-bit Windows Server 2008 as a Workstation OS, which is exactly what I want to do. The parts are:
I recently purchased a new machine with the intention of going this route. My old machine was an AMD 64-bit one, but it couldn't take more than 4GB, and I was fed up with slowness in VMs.
So far I've used some of the hints in this blog to get started, installing W2K8 and Hyper-V.
Or at least I’m getting ready to take the plunge into using Hyper-V. In my machine dilemma, I decided to look at new machines. My first stop, as usual, was Dell. They have a lot of choices, but in terms of desktops, I struggled to find a good machine that would by 64-bit, run Hyper-V and not cost and arm and a leg. Actually my first step was trying to find something to run 8GB of RAM, and there were few choices there.
I went to the Hyper-V and Windows 2008 sites, but it wasn’t completely clear what specs I needed in hardware. They mention hardware virtualization support and trusted execution stuff, but putting this together in terms of the choices out there for CPUs isn’t easy. I wish it were as simple as a Pentium I, Pentium II, etc. Instead there are multiple flavors of dual and quad cores, various AMD chips, etc. Sempron, Xeon, Athlon, Phenom, Q8200, Q6600, it’s nuts.
I quickly decided this was a bad idea. I checked the C|Net Reviews, but they are mainly for people wanting to run Vista, and they don’t have a lot of info to help me. I wanted to wipe a machine, get Hyper-V installed and then do what I want. It seemed in the mainstream world there was a Dell deal for about $900 that had 6GB of RAM and a 64-bit CPU as well as a Gateway that had 8GB for about $800. However I wasn’t sure any of these would run Windows Server 2008. I priced out an HP that might have worked, but it was also up in the $1000 range.
I posted a note on Twitter as well and got a few recommendations, but most of them were “build your own” and that didn’t appeal to me. It’s not worth saving $200 or more if I have to spend hours trying to mix and match the proper components. I found a few more builders online, but none of them wanted to sell me a good systems, but without lots of bells and whistles.
In some searching around for information about the various CPUs I could get, I stumbled on ecollegepc from somewhere. They looked like a reasonable builder, and while they’re not local, they just attracted me as a nice, easy to use site.
I believe in instincts and they struck me as a good place to shop, so I checked out and priced a basic 8GB quad core. No keyboard, no mouse, no speakers, no OS, just a machine. It came in around $700.
Since I wasn’t sure what I needed, and what would match, I emailed them, telling them this story:
“I'm looking to replace my desktop and your company was recommended to me. I haven't purchased a desktop in quite a few years, but here are some things I'm looking to do and was looking for some advice.”
I was pleasantly surprised to get an email back in less than an hour, telling me that I would want to use the Q6600 Quad core, not any of the others, and a Gigabyte motherboard. I had a few more questions, including moving my current nVidia display adapter over and ended up exchanging 3 or 4 emails with their tech. Or maybe the owner, not sure who it was, but he was helpful, and quick to respond.
The whole process and advice just felt good and so I placed an order. I got:
I also got a fancy LED lit case that will impress the kids. It might annoy me enough to put a something over it, but for now it will be in the desk.
Once it comes, I’ll move stuff over to it and then install Windows Home Server on my existing Dimension E521. It’s a 64-bit desktop with AMD chips that should run that fine. I have 2 SATA drives in there and might add another to give me most space for backups.
While I was testing some things the other day my desktop was running slow. I mean so slow that typing into Live Writer took 15-20 seconds for the screen to catch up with what I’d typed, and my testing in a VM (W2K3, Virtual PC) was really, really slow.
I’m not sure why since I had the VM running on a local disk with the rest of my XP installation, but I decided to check my settings for the computer. I right clicked “My Computer” and selected Properties. It showed me 2GB, which isn’t bad except I had put in 4GB of RAM awhile back.
At least I was fairly confident that I had. I know I’d wanted to upgrade this machine from 2GB to 4GB since I use it a lot. So I flipped through my expense folder, saw a receipt from Crucial.com and started wondering what could be wrong.
My first stop was to actually see if I had RAM in the machine. I could have shut down, opened the case and looked, but that’s a pain. So I went to the Crucial site to check and see if they could rescan my system. I downloaded the scanner and saw this:
Now I was really confused. They thought I had 4GB, why didn’t Windows? I surfed around a little, but this wasn’t a huge priority. There were some sites that said 32 bit XP might only show 3 or 3.5GB, which doesn’t make sense. 32-bit Windows server doesn’t have issues with 4GB, and it should show up, but it’s an old OS, maybe there’s something here.
The next day I opened the machine, and sure enough there was 4 sticks in there. The only thing I could think is that they didn’t want to work together. One is DDR2 5200 and the other is 5300. I had a new 1TB HDD to install, so I did that, reseated the memory and booted. Windows came up, the HDD was there, and on a whim I checked the properties. I now had 3GB.
Sweet!
So I shut down, closed up the case, and rebooted. And found 2GB.
:(
I chatted with a rep at Crucial, and she was nice, letting me know that memory should work together, and suggesting I just try the new memory. Mental head slap, so after we were done, I did that. It didn’t help and while it worked, I still didn’t have 3GB.
I put things back together and sat down to think of what to do. The machine was still slow, not a good situation. I need to do more VM work, I have SQL stuff to mess with and a slow machine isn’t in anyone’s interest. So I had a couple of choices:
I’ll admit the second choice sounds extreme, but I’ve been wanting a Windows Home Server to back things up. I was considering the HP Media Smart server, which is 64-bit, and will help keep all the data at the Ranch safe. However, that’s a $500 investment. My old desktop doesn’t have SATA, an old motherboard (6 years old), and doesn’t want to load WHS right now. And I honestly don’t want to have something that’s a hassle. I just want it to work.
So I’m debating about what to do right now. I haven’t had a new machine in at least 2, maybe 3 years so I’m tempted to upgrade now and go 64-bit all the way.
OK, I’m not going to make a huge habit of responding to these chains, but I have a few spare moments, and I like Aunt Kathi, so I’ll join in here.
My actual first computer was a Vic-20. I saw one when I was 11 or 12 and was fascinated. I loved video games and had plans of writing my own, so my brother and I begged and begged my Mom to get one. She decided it was educational enough, so we got one.
We had a cassette tape storage system and I learned to actually do some simple calculations on it. I’d run through PI, SIN, COS, other simple things that I was doing in school. We had a joystick and struggled to build an interface in BASIC that would read the joystick and move a pixel around the screen.
I’m not sure what games we had there, though I know we did. I moved to a Commodore 64 and then an Apple II pretty quickly. The Apple II was the most popular with Zork, Wizardry and a few other arcade style games.
I lived with that Apple II into college, working in my dorm across a 300baud modem to write programs. After that I went about 5 or 6 years without a computer, using a few at work before finally building my first PC.
