Ian You dont need a server, a nicely loaded desktop or even large laptop would do the job.
What is the budget like? I would go with desktop grade motherboard (budget being tight), ssd disk for root, sata for remaining. Setup multiple disks in raid 1 or raid 5. CPU depending on the budget. RAM being affordable is not a big deal. My personal preference would be to stay with KVM as then you can remain on stock linux with no kernel trouble and use it as desktop development machine when/if needed or don't use it as desktop if u want it to be "server". I usually go on sites like newegg and amazon and read reviews. Specs would really depend on budget, in US I can build this setup for about $800, more or less depends on the componets. Regards Ilya - All mistakes in this message are not mine but Android's. -------- Original message -------- From: Ian Duffy <i...@ianduffy.ie> Date: To: CloudStack Dev <dev@cloudstack.apache.org> Subject: Demo Lab - To rent or To buy Hi, I'm looking for peoples personal opinions. I'm thinking about undertaking a project for a 2 month college assignment sometime in the future to create an API wrapper and web front end with the end goal of producing something like the rackspace or linode web-ui. I do realise 'basic cloud' is a solved problem, but I'm not seeing any *open source projects* that allow for user sign up, select a package offering, billing, ticketing etc. along with basic instance/vm management. The cost of setting up a demo lab seems somewhat expensive. My idea was: 1 xenserver with 16gb+ ram make use of local storage, 1 cloudstack manager/secondary storage 2gb+ of ram, finally something to host the wrapper and web app. What hardware would you recommend for creating a budget, portable and quiet demo lab? Do you think I would be better of renting? If so are their any companies you would suggestion? Thanks, Ian
