I am looking at my server needs here, and I am thinking that with the developments in faster dual core hyperthreaded processors and cheap memory, and developments with virtualization, it might be time to radically change my IT environment here in the office.

Right now I have a home LAN with a few printers, Laptops, Xbox (Only for displaying video you understand… not for Games) and VoIP. And I have a Windows 2003 server running VisualStudio/SQLserver 2005 for debugging and development and some low bandwidth network GPS listening applets. I have a Linux machine running Mail and mostly WebServer and an insecure file server. And I have an online archive. And I have a separate industrial strength firewall. Obviously the load on the servers is not very high at all.

I am thinking that maybe it is time to replace the physical Linux and Windows servers with virtual servers. The firewall would remain by itself as a standalone machine.

However I have no experience with Virtualized PC’s…. I know that you can have multiple images running on the same machine, and I think this makes sense to me, but how should I do it… I guess I have some basic questions :-
0. Is this scheme sensible?
1. What should I use as a base host O/S for the virtualization?
2. What should I use as the virtualizing software? VM Ware? VirtualServer?
3. What Gotcha’s are there in doing this type of thing?

Hmm… Lots to think about!