Home Hyper-V Server

by Zack · Published September 25, 2014 · Updated September 1, 2016

I have always used Proxmox or ESXi for virtualization, but this time I wanted to give Server 2012 R2 + Hyper-V a spin. I also wanted to virtualize my IPFire firewall, a Domain Controller, and eventually, my fileserver. I have also eliminated the need for one of my HTPC’s, because I’m able to use the Hyper-V host as a Plex Home Theater host. Here is a list of the hardware. I transplanted these parts into an old Antec case and used an older Antec PSU I had as well.

[CPU] Intel i5-4590
[MOBO] ASRock B85M Pro4
[RAM] 32GB of Crucial DDR3-1600
[OS HD] Samsung 830 64GB
[VM HD] Crucial MX100 512GB (Both SSDs in an Icy Dock EZ-Fit Lite Holder).
[BACKUP HD] Hitachi Deskstar 2TB
[NIC1] Intel I350-T4

I have swapped out the two Intel nics and replaced them with an Intel I350-T4 quad port gigabit adapter so that I can get an IBM M1015 attached to the board, and virtualize my fileserver as well. I’ve also used this machine to eliminate the need for my old Core2Quad Q9550 OpenELEC + Plex box that feeds my basement projector. I ran a 25′ optical audio cable and a DVI -> ethernet -> DVI adapter to my projector. DXVA keeps the load down on the CPU even playing back a Bluray disc. This machine uses 1/10th of the power of the old Dell machine and is MANY times more powerful. So far, this has been a really exciting experience.

As an update, I have decided to hold off on migrating my storage to this box. Although, I am able to pass through disks to a virtual machine in Hyper-V, it does not pass through the raw disk, so this prevents things the smartmontools from scanning my disks for issues or hdparm to spin my disks down.