After work today I got the server up and running doing a build/ verify Raid 6 array on the 8x new Western Digital Green 1.5TB drives. Since the current WHS is still in use, I used some spare hardware in the place of the legacy hardware including a 850w Coolermaster PSU, EVGA 8800 GTS 512MB, and an Adaptec 5805.
Something I should have known to do, but forgot to check, is that VMWare ESXi does not work with the Realtek onboard NICs of the Asus P6T7 Supercomputer, and apparently there is a further chipset conflict. Since I was between going Hyper-V and ESXi as a hypervisor, VMWare’s incompatibility made the decision easy.
Tomorrow after work (which sadly has been consuming 12+ hours a day lately) I will probably pick up Windows Server 2008 R2 as a Hyper-V platform. I like the idea of running WHS from the free Hyper-V server, however, since the goal of this box would be to run VM’s for other servers anyway, I’ll probably just go the Microsoft route.
