A suped-up desktop for VPC

my company did an evaluation of VPC & VMWare, and found that you can do a lot more with VMWare on the same machine than VPC. Other than that, get a LOT of memory, and you might consider multiple processors (on the MAC this makes a significant difference).

If you are comfortable with building your own, do it. You can find great deals online or at stores like Fry's Electronics. In August, I built one that has a P4 3.2 GHz w/Hyperthreading, 2 GB DDR, ABIT Motherboard w/ built-in LAN & 6SATA, 2 Maxtor 250GB drives running RAID 0 for a grand total of 1/2 terrabyte of storage space, plus an nVidia 6800 256MB Graphics card.

I can run VPC VMs left and right and no worries. :-)

Get a server (a big one) with a couple of CPU's, a good scsi-card (or 2). a few scsi disks (system on disk #1, swap file on #2, VPC's on disk #3,4,5,6 etc). Use raid on the disks to (i dont know which raid configuration is best for VPC)
And of course, loads of memory.
The server should then be able to host your and your buddy's VPC's with Virtual Server 2005. Access the VPC's with remote desktop.

Sean, how much did you spend on that configuration? What parts dealer did you use?

I would recommend avoiding RAID 0 and going with a RAID 5 SATA adapter (<$200) and four SATA drives. Depending on the size of the drives you may spend more / less than a RAID 0 solution but you'll get a) better perf and b) reliability (RAID 0 is twice as likely to fail as no RAID at all, whereas RAID 5 can tolerate a single drive failure out of the 4).

On the SCSI suggestion -- good, but I'm not sure what SCSI buys you -- and it's aheckava lot more in comparison to SATA.

We use SCSI completely at work, but you can get SATA raid controllers from "reliable" brands such as Highpoint and Promise. I have a server at home out of my own pocket with a 8-port SATA card and a couple of RAID 1+0 (striping and mirroring) running reliability (under Windows Server 2003) for going on 3 years now.

Also if you're going down that route, look into Virtual Server --

I've found that NewEgg.com has some great prices and excellent service -- if I order on Monday I usually get my order here (to Utah) by wed or thurs.

Last note, alot of the new mobo's on the market have built-in SATA raid controllers. raid-0 is great for perf when working with VPC's -- might want to check out the AMD Athlon 64's

Thanks everyone - this feedback is very helpful.

John, I'm pretty sure if I want to go from RAID 0 to RAID 4, I can do that without wiping my drives. This would give me the speed of RAID 0 with a backup mirror, so I can tolerate the loss of 1 drive just like RAID 5. This is built into the motherboard. My last PC ran RAID 0 and I kept a backup data drive. The raid drive never failed. The speed increase you get from RAID 0 is so significant, I will NEVER, EVER build another PC again without it...EVER. :-)

"upgrade" to VMWare, it really it a better product, at least try the demo out. Otherwise move from using an external HD and make sure your using at least double the memory you you use on a tipical pc.

Hey, I read on the Onion blog that you guys went the "custom route." Hope it worked out for you!