So in trying to keep up with the hardware aspects of my job, I have recently taken the plunge into Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V. I first started with my laptop. A Dell Latitude D630. After I converted it and played around with Hyper-V I was convinced that I was ready to upgrade my main file server to the 2K8 OS. In it's current form it was a dual proc 2.8Ghz with 8GB of RAM and my 2.75TB RAID 5EE array. I thought it would be the perfect machine to house my virtual home network (shared PC's, web servers, active directory etc.). So I went through the hassle of installing all that and came to find out that the Opteron 280 series processors do not support virtualization.
I was bummed. I had such grand plans. Luckily I had a spare XW9400 lying around. The specs on it were much better. Dual Dual core 2218 series processors and 14GB of RAM but it only had a mirrored 500GB drive. More importantly it was my main home workstation and I had all my multimedia apps and codecs installed on it.
I decided to take the plunge and move all the hardware around; to move the mirrored 500GB drives from the 9400 to the 9300 and the 6 750GB drives and the raid controller and put that in the 9400. Once that was all done, I had to do some reconfiguring and such but I finally had the 9400 Installed with DC, Hyper-V and File Server roles (I will probably also make this a backup server as well since it has the storage array attached.
My 9300 needs to be re-installed now with Vista 64 and I will need to upgrade the video card to run my multimedia applications. I will continue to use this to process images and videos.
My next goals are to install a farm of machines that I can use to do some skunk works type of training on some of the latest MS has to offer. I will start with SharePoint development; focusing on how one can create generic deployable features that can be used to act on data in lists etc.
I also want to look into how Groove works in the enterprise. I have used it in the past for years and loved the ability to keep different PC's sync'd with each other. In the enterprise it could me even more real time collaboration within the distributed team.