ExistNY

Garycase, thank you for this and your earlier reply. Very helpful. I am intrigued by the prospect of virtualization, but am really new to this, so any advice you have is very much appreciated. I just checked on SuperMicro's website, and it indicates that ESXI is not supported by the x10-SLH-F. Seems strange, since the x10-SLH-F uses a C226 chipset, a true server-grade chipset that according to intel supports VT-d. My Xeon processor also supports VT-d, as per Intel. Should I be concerned that SuperMicro says my board isn't compatible with ESXI? Is there a sata/sas controller that you recommend to use in an unRAID/virtualization setup that would not compromise performance too much? Am I crazy for even considering this?

Thanks, all. I have a few follow-up questions: (1) What's a good, QUIET, small CPU fan that won't block my 4th RAM slot? (2) If I want to run ESXI with unRAID and WHS 11, can I do so with just a cheap 4 port SATA III controller, or do I need fancier hardware?

Hello all, While I have built many computers before, I've never built a "server" and have very little experience with this. But I'm willing to learn. To this end, I took advantage of a few black friday deals and bought the following components (each at a discounted price): Case: Fractal Design Define Mini Mobo: SuperMicro x10SLH-F CPU: e3-1230-v3 RAM: 32gb total: Crucial 4x8GB ECC unbuffered PSU: Seasonic ss-460FL2 Data drives: 4 x Seagate Barracuda 3TB Cache drive: Seagate 240mb SSD Total: ~$1400 I would like to use this build as a central file server, a media server for my tv and mobile devices, a printer server, and as a personal data cloud so that I can access my documents from anywhere. While I originally planned for this to be solely a unRAID server, I purposefully splurged for the beefier processor and more RAM so that I had the option to install WHS or to run both WHS and unRAID via virtualization. Given these various functions, should I consider WHS or WHS and unRAID via virtualization? Is this something a newbie like myself could reasonably accomplish? Or am I better off just sticking to WHS or unRAID and applicable plug-ins? Any and all other tips are of course welcome. Thank you!