Home Server Episode 1
I've decided to build a home server with the intention to build a system which can power virtual machines, allow for SR-IOV, IOMMU, and gaming from a virtual desktop. This system will be running OpenStack on the latest Ubuntu LTS with the latest LTS kernel.
Here are the specs:
- AMD Opteron 6270
- 64 GB of DDR3 1333
- Dynatron 2U Active CPU
- Supermicro H8SGL-F Motherboard
- Transcend 256GB MLC SATA III Drives x 3
- AMD R9 380x
- EVGA 1000GQ PSU
- Antec Three Hundred case
The Motherboard and chipset both support SR-IOV and IOMMU out of the box so there's nothing much I need to do to make that go from a hardware perspective. While the bios does support fakeRAID, I will be using software RAID at RAID0 on two of the disks all within a standard AHCI setup. This should allow the OS and my VMs to perform without contention. This system will be run headless when the gaming/workstation VMs are not running.
Checkout this post for OS installation details which covers some of the problems I ran into while attempting to install Ubuntu Server 16.04.x using USB media.