CPU advice, what "plays" nice with PROXMOX

[leenux_tux]

Hello PROXMOX forum,

First post and PROXMOX "newb" so please be gentle with me !!

First a question then a little history.

Question:
Does anyone have any experience/advice on a reasonable priced quad core (if possible) Intel Pentium/2nd gen i3 LGA1155 chip I can use on my new Supermicro X9SCL-f motherboard for running PROXMOX ?

History:
This is a home office based system used for testing/education and some development work and I rarely run more than 4 VM's at any one time so CPU speed (I'm thinking expensive Xeon's here) is not needed. Also, the VM's are not usually left running for more than a couple of days at a time.

There will be no local storage on this server as VM's are currently held on FreeNAS (NFS or ISCSI, I have both setup) as I am actually replacing an ageing AMD based system (runs ESXi5) that I have been using for well over 4 years now. This system uses an AMD Phenom quad core CPU. The new server will boot from USB (is this OK ?)

I say I am a PROXMOX "newb" but I have a small amount of experience with PROXMOX as I have tested it in a VM connecting to NFS storage on my FreeNAS system and created a couple of VM's, but I am would not say I am "experienced" with PROXMOX at all.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated and if I need to provide any more info please let me know.

Thx

 

[mir]

I would go for a Intel Xeon E3-1230 v2. Where god in KVM and very cheap at the moment $230.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117286

Proxmox cannot be installed on USB.

 

[x86]

If you are about the replace the storage server, you might look at openfiler (it's made for 'real' shared storage situations). You might connect it with fiber (FCoE) instead of iSCSI to your proxmox nodes/hosts. A good storage server requires only one quad core socket and more RAM is better (so you can cache things to make it even faster).
It's also better to put an USB-stick into your proxmox nodes/hosts instead of using hdd's like you said.

If you need any more information, feel free to contact me.

 

[mir]

openfiler is a dead project and has not seen any updates in several years!!!!

proxmox cannot be installed on USB!!!

Please don't spread wrong information.

 

[x86]

I was not aware about openfiler. Never used it in a production environment. Most (dell) servers recognizes an internal usb-stick as a drive.

 

[mir]

It is not a question whether proxmox will recognize a usb stick or not, or whether proxmox can be installed on a usb stick. The question is that proxmox was not designed to run from usb. Using usb an the lifetime expectation for the usb could it best case be counted in months. usb is designed for "dead" data but proxmox is very alive data.

 

[leenux_tux]

I would go for a Intel Xeon E3-1230 v2. Where god in KVM and very cheap at the moment $230.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117286

Proxmox cannot be installed on USB.

Firstly, thanks for all the replies, much appreciated.

Secondly, apologies for the confusion, mentioning a storage server obviously set people off in the wrong direction!

I have no intention of replacing my storage server, I am VERY happy with FreeNAS. I was just trying to give some background on what stores my Virtual Machines.

I am looking at replacing the system that hosts my VM's (VMWare ESXi), both hardware and software. I have the motherboard and case already, I was looking for advice on a CPU.

It's a tad disappointing that PROXMOX can not be run from a USB drive, I guess I will have to get a small SSD to host the OS.