How it All Started

I have always been interested in and played with computers, the newest OS versions, Microsoft applications, website development and setting up new computers just to play with something new.

In late December, a collegue at work introduced me to VMware so I installed it on my home workstation and started playing with it. I installed different VMs and eventually decided I wanted a permenant VM as a BIT Torrent download system. However, after a short time and many reboots (by other family members) which left my VMs down, I came to the conclusion that I could use a dedicated VMware Server in my landscape and wanted to get it off my workstation.

I already had a windows server that was the center of my landscape. An old Pentium III was runing DNS, DHCP, File sharing, Webserver, and OpenVPN as well a really OLD Pentium II I used exclusively as a BIT Torrent system (mainly to segregate that type of activity to a stand-alone computer for availability and virus/hacking peace of mind) that I accessed via a web interface.

In early January I came up with the idea of getting a new computer with lots of memory and using it as a VMware Server farm. However, after looking into new computers the price ranges quickly became to prohibitive. One day I was driving home from soccer and I heard a commercial on the radio for The Trailing Edge. When I got home I went to their website and to my great delight found they had an IBM workstation with Dual (2) 3GHz Pentium IV cpus and 4G of RAM for less than $300. I was so excited I couldn’t beleive it was true. I explained my find to my friends at work and they all agreed it would be the perfect workhorse for a VMware Server at home.

I began by installing a base Windows 2000 Server config on a 60G ATA drive and tuning it down to have a minimal memory footprint. Next I installed VMware Server but I new I wouldn’t be able to run many VMs on only 60G so I installed a Promise Fasttrack SATA2 controller and a 500G Western Digital HDD where I would eventually put all my VMs.