I recently purchased an HP ProLiant G7 N54L (AMD Turion II 2.2 GHz Dual Core, 2 GB RAM) to use as a home server. The main function will be centralized storage for our home (mainly SMB shares, possibly some media streaming). The storage is all contained on a 2 TB drive which I sync with an external 2 TB drive for backup & traveling. I will also be running a virtualized Windows XP install to support a legacy printer.
My initial thought was to install Ubuntu Server directly on the machine, but then I was thinking about my travel. If I virtualized the file server as well, I could copy it to the external drive along with my files and then run it from my laptop through something like VirtualBox. This would allow my laptop to see the files as being in the same place as they are when I am home. (BTW, because it's likely to be suggested, the size of the files would make a cloud storage configuration untenable.)
My question is about the performance difference between various configurations. I am sure there will be some, but will it be significant given that there are only 2-3 users.
Option 1: Install the file server directly to the machine. Run Windows virtually.
Option 2: Install a basic linux OS to the machine and then run the file server and Windows virtually.
Option 3: Set up the server with some kind of bare metal hypervisor (Oracle VM Server or similar) to run the virtual file server and virtual Windows.
I have used VirtualBox quite a bit but have very little experience with servers and none with Type 1 hypervisors. I have no idea how easy it would be to copy the virtualized file server to the external drive each time and then run it from virtualbox under the Option 3 configuration.
Option 2 seems like the most straightforward given my desires and previous experience, but how much of a performance hit will I take? Also, if you would recommend that option, what should the base linux be?
My initial thought was to install Ubuntu Server directly on the machine, but then I was thinking about my travel. If I virtualized the file server as well, I could copy it to the external drive along with my files and then run it from my laptop through something like VirtualBox. This would allow my laptop to see the files as being in the same place as they are when I am home. (BTW, because it's likely to be suggested, the size of the files would make a cloud storage configuration untenable.)
My question is about the performance difference between various configurations. I am sure there will be some, but will it be significant given that there are only 2-3 users.
Option 1: Install the file server directly to the machine. Run Windows virtually.
Option 2: Install a basic linux OS to the machine and then run the file server and Windows virtually.
Option 3: Set up the server with some kind of bare metal hypervisor (Oracle VM Server or similar) to run the virtual file server and virtual Windows.
I have used VirtualBox quite a bit but have very little experience with servers and none with Type 1 hypervisors. I have no idea how easy it would be to copy the virtualized file server to the external drive each time and then run it from virtualbox under the Option 3 configuration.
Option 2 seems like the most straightforward given my desires and previous experience, but how much of a performance hit will I take? Also, if you would recommend that option, what should the base linux be?