Hyper-V or Separate Physical Servers
Hyper-V or Separate Physical Servers
I need some advice since I'm just starting with virtual machines. I'm setting up a home server with several tasks: file storage, Plex media streaming, and a server for streaming. I originally planned FreeNAS but switched to Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials because I'm a student and got free access via DreamSpark. I used WS2012 before, so I'm more familiar with that. My setup includes about 8 TB of storage and two 120GB SSDs in RAID1 for the operating system. I'm running a Xeon E3-1246v3B processor on a Supermicro X10SL-7 motherboard with 16GB ECC RAM. I also have three spare systems: PFSense, an isolated Usenet download system, and another backup. Two of those are older Supermicro servers with dual Xeons (single core), and the third is a basic PC. My main concern is whether I should run all these applications on one VM or split them across multiple VMs. I'm worried about performance, security, and whether combining everything on one system is a good idea. Also, I'm unsure if an infected VM could spread malware to others and whether keeping a VM as-is is safe. I also want to know if I can save a VM state and restore it later. Any suggestions would be appreciated. - Abe
Consider operating two machines. Use one with W2012 and Hyper-v for required Windows functions. Run another with XenServer or ESXi (free version) and host your Linux VMs there. Hyper-V works okay but can be tricky with Linux. A CentOS VM is suggested for your Plex server. You could technically run Xen or ESXi on one machine, create a W2012 VM and add Hyper-v, though performance may suffer.
It has been some time since I relied on Hyper-V (previously Windows Server 2008 SP2). I’m considering switching to VMware now. For hardware-based solutions, I’d prefer running PFSense directly. You could repurpose your old Supermicro dual-Xeon setup. From my perspective, these servers might be too much for your current requirements concerning routing and firewalls. However, since you already own them, it makes sense to keep them in case a virus or malware spreads across the network and infects a VM that’s connected. Even if your VM is part of the same network, it can still access the internet. If you need your Windows 7/8 Usenet in a DMZ (isolated environment), set up a dedicated VLAN in PFSense that only communicates with the internet, not with other subnets or VLANs. Then, within your VM, you can connect to that network. Unless you can link multiple VLANs together between PFSense and your Hyper-V server, you’ll need separate network interfaces on both devices—ideally using enterprise-grade NIC drivers. You might also consider setting up a VM for the Usenet server, leveraging snapshots to safely revert changes or during major updates like Service Packs. Snapshots are a key part of my daily backups for all virtual servers, helping me restore configurations quickly. Regarding the Plex server, I’d opt for hardware if you need heavy transcoding power, as it demands significant CPU resources. Plex handles transcoding well but requires strong hardware. If I ever decide to move from XBMC to Plex, it would be for transcoding tasks. For everything else, XBMC works perfectly. My proposed setup could look like this: one physical server for Windows 2012 storage and Hyper-V, one virtual machine in a dedicated VLAN/DMZ for Usenet downloads, plus another VM for Plex transcoding. In this arrangement, I’d likely need around 16GB of RAM unless you’re running many test VMs simultaneously. Let me know if this clarifies your thoughts!