New computer

[peteinwilts]

being a technical manager working for a server manufacturing company, I can have some of the latest hardware and whatever OS's I like.

Virtualised Windows on a Linux box will run faster. Virtualised Linux on a Windows box will also run faster. It is to do with the striping of the data on the disk as the seek time is much faster. Also, the drivers are running virtualised hardware making the memory use more efficiant.

A Tower PC is a Tower PC is a Tower PC (unless it has Dell, HP or another propriety brand which (in my opinion) would not touch with a barge pole).

Most PC's you find in Dixons, Currys etc are built in no more than a small number of company's in the UK. They are built, then branded.

Probably the best motherboard at the moment are built by Supermicro. They will cost a little more than the regular tosh. Many motherboards (i.e. Gigabyte) will try and pack on too much onto the board. An awful lot of eggs in the basket!

So... if you want a tower, try and go for one with a Supermicro motherboard. Then as much RAM, CPU as you can afford. The disk can be upgraded later if you wanted.


With your copy of Windows, you will probably invalidate the license agreement. The current policy does not allow you to swap the motherboard unless you are a Microsoft 'partner'.
Give it a go. When you phone (and you WILL have to phone!), tell them that your motherboard has failed and has just been replaced.... don't tell them you have replaced the machine. The MS staff are not bright and they will give you a new code.

If you want a laptop, you can't get much better value for money than the ASUS eepc range of laptops. Again, as much memory and cpu power as you can afford.

 

[Poly Hive]

Update.

The promised me an Email from the courier giving an hour slot for the delivery. It arrvied as stated and the courier arrived bang on half way through said hour. Impressed? I am.

Machine is performing very well indeed.

I needed one bit of info so had to phone them and they were helpful personified.

It arrived with Linux preinstalled no less, and yes I was impressed.

So I have tried in vain tonight to install XP on the old machine and kept coming up against a DLL exe error after loading on Avast. So.. after two installs effectively failed I am loading Ubuntu onto the puter which is free to use for the guests with a RNLI lifeboat on the desk with a wee notice "suggesting" that they donate if they print and also if they use the facility...

Thanks to all who made helpful suggestions. Oh and Windows took the code like a good un with no issues much to my surprise. Probably because it was 64 instead of 32... I surmise.

PH

 

[hedgerow pete]

can i just say that after following this thread from the begining that some of it made sence the ebay purchase looks great but to be honest 3/4 of the time "i not understanda, whata you speak"

i realy do feel left out at times , lol

great purchase poly hive , enjoy

 

[Jamieb]

Virtualised Windows on a Linux box will run faster. Virtualised Linux on a Windows box will also run faster. It is to do with the striping of the data on the disk as the seek time is much faster. Also, the drivers are running virtualised hardware making the memory use more efficiant.

Sorry but this statement is totally meaningless and just plain wrong!!!

 

[alanf]

Sorry but this statement is totally meaningless and just plain wrong!!!

If a statement is meaningless it cannot be either right or wrong.

There may be clearer ways of expressing the points but the principle that a completely virtualised machine running in memory runs faster than one on real hardware has been true for at least 30 years.

 

[Jamieb]

How could that possibly be true without quantifying the hardware?

 

[peteinwilts]

How could that possibly be true without quantifying the hardware?

and quantifying the application that is run on the virtual system.

Some of the older virtual Servers run a lot slower than the more modern up to date virtualt servers.
Discussing speed between physical to virtual servers is not easy to evaluate. i.e you may have a server with 12 physical cores, but you will not run a Virtual server with 12 Virtual cores.

A virtual server is running on a physical server. If you allocate 1TB storage space, 1Gb RAM and 1 Core, the system will run considerably faster than a physical system with 1TB storage, 1GB RAM and 1 Core.

This is not only due to seek time of the disk (as the physical disk on a virtual server requires a larger partition to place it on, which is placed in a nice neat stripe therefore leading to a faster seek time).
I guess a similar condition in a physical server would be to partition the drive down to match the virtual hard disk size.

The virtual system has a more efficiant core and memory as it is not running physical hardware, therefore you can spec a lower powered virtual server than if you were spec'ing a physical server.
This is because virtual servers run within the hypervisor layer underneath the host operating system. Therefore it does not need to mess about with many of the overheads of a full blown operating system.

I stand my ground. Linux or Windows running within a virtual server will run faster in a virtualised environment of the same spec. (i.e. 1 core, 1GB RAM, 1TB HDD)

I am however very interested if you can tell me why this is not the case...

 

[Jamieb]

Surely a virtual server running on a physical server would, on the face of it, require more resources than a straight physical?
If you think about it there is another layer of provisioning required;
physical - hypervisor - virtual
Instead of just;
physical - OS.

My experience at enterprise level has been limited to VMware but there are certain requirements to getting the best from a virtualised OS.
For example, disk alignment (depending on OS), hardware pass-through, correct provisioning for the application (I have an app that runs on 2 virtual processors better than 4?).
From my own observations Windows 2008 is a nightmare virtualised (more so if you include WSUS etc), I believe this to be due to Windows trying to be "virtual aware" but can’t pin it down.

For what it’s worth I'm not knocking virtualisation, quite the opposite, but to say that one is better than the other is incorrect and tends to lead to misunderstandings (which I spend a lot of time trying to correct!!)
For clarity this quote “This is not only due to seek time of the disk (as the physical disk on a virtual server requires a larger partition to place it on, which is placed in a nice neat stripe therefore leading to a faster seek time).
I guess a similar condition in a physical server would be to partition the drive down to match the virtual hard disk size.” is incorrect.
As I alluded to earlier, disk alignment play’s a huge part in virtual servers. By coincidence (not by design) Linux virtual servers are built with the same starting block as the VMFS file system used by VMware, this is not the case with Windows servers so if this is not corrected every seek on a virtual Windows server will have to cross 2 (maybe more) block boundaries potentially leading to twice the seek time as would be required had the server been built on a physical box (i.e. using its own NTFS, EXT3 file system at the start).

I’ve not really got time to go into more depth but can if you like.

 

[peteinwilts]

I work with Servers all day, so I also cannot really be hassled to go into technical debates during my free time.
All I was saying is on a like for like spec, virtual systems HAS to be more effeciant than physical servers. The virtual OS sits in the hypervisor. The host manages the hardware, so the virtual client system does not have to.
This was my response to Hombre who was talking about virtual systems running faster than physical. This is not really the forum to go into nerdy levels of technical competence, or which is better as physical have plenty of advantages over virtual. VMWare has a lot of advantages over MS, and vice versa.
It is just a matter of deciding the right tool for the job, and the right tool may not be suitable due to the skills\inteligence of the people who look after them.

Vmware, 2008R2 and xen all work the same way, just different methods of implimentation, and as you can align blocks with VMWare, you can do the same with types of VM.

Hyper-V is not a nightmare. VMWare is just smarter with it's management. However, MS are pouring more resource into Hyper-V than any other product in it's history, so hopefully their ridiculously overcomplicated and overpriced management system will get better.

I have no doubt they are planning to do the same to VMWare as they did to Novell.... and we all remember that!

 

[hedgerow pete]

I have just read the last couple of posts several times and for some reason my brain has just turned into mush!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



so turning it on and off does not work any more??


lol

 

[Hombre]

Thanks Peteinwilts, I didn't intend that the thread should go virtual, but do appreciate your update on the matter.