Botting with Virtual Machines

[TPBJP]

oh one more thing. why would you get 2 magnetic hard drives which will be fully taxed with read/writes when you can get a solid state drive which thrives in these situations
both my systems have SSD's. my new system has intel 520's and the old q6600 has a 60gb vertex 2. im not saying a magnetic hard drive _cant_ do it, but i can guarantee a solid state drive can do it better.

you should spend some time mastering VMware before you proceed with anything drastic though

[jbj81]

Thanks TPBJP for your input. Im curious, do you have experience from VirtualBox also since you say VMware is superior? What i have heard the VirtualBox is much lighter than VMware. And about the hard drives. I really have not thought this trough. Perhaps all SSD's would be optimal. In your experience should there be 1 SSD for every two VM's or something like that? And would 1155/1150 Xeon processors be the best for virtualization?

[sngbot]

Don't worry too much about SSDs. Yes your computer will boot faster, and the poker client and bot will load faster. But once running, as long as you have enough RAM, there won't be enough reads/writes to justify the extra cost of SSDs over HDDs. And the money you save you can spend on the CPU.

[jbj81]

Don't worry too much about SSDs. Yes your computer will boot faster, and the poker client and bot will load faster. But once running, as long as you have enough RAM, there won't be enough reads/writes to justify the extra cost of SSDs over HDDs. And the money you save you can spend on the CPU.

My thought exactly. But the cheapest HDDs cost the same as 60gb SSD so what is the difference? I dont need the extra capacity that HDD offers.

[sngbot]

In which case go for the SSDs.

[jbj81]

What about processors?
CPU |  Cores/Threads | Clock | Cache
i5-3570K | 4/4 | 3.40GHz | 6.0MB
i5-4670K | 4/4 | 3.40GHz | 6.0MB
E3-1235 | 4/8 | 3.20GHz | 8.0MB
i7-3770K | 4/8 | 3.50GHz | 8.0MB
i7-4770K | 4/8 | 3.50GHz | 8.0MB
i7-3820 | 4/8 | 3.60GHz | 10.0MB

The LGA1155 is the most cost effective. LGA1150 costs a little more. And LGA2011 costs much more because of the motherboards.

[sngbot]

i7-4770K is ranked highest out of those.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4770K+%40+3.50GHz&id=1919

[jbj81]

i7-4770K is ranked highest out of those.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4770K+%40+3.50GHz&id=1919

Yes but that is overall cpu performance not specific for my needs which is running 4 virtual machines.

[sngbot]

You're never going to find such a specific benchmark. I think it's fair to assume that a cpu that ranks highly overall will probably also be the best for your needs.

[jbj81]

In server hosting and specially running several virtual machines cores are important and probably cahce becaus all the high en Xeon processors has high cache. So i would say i7-3820 is fastest processor for my needs but it costs too much.

[TPBJP]

without speculating too much, i can only say that my system with an i5-3570k, 32gb ram, 120gb ssd can run 4 VM's at once with under 30% CPU usage. each VM was setup with 2gb of ram and all running off the same SSD. I dont know the limits of the SSD running X number of VM's, and i dont know the limits of any magnetic hard drives on running VM's- assuming you have enough ram per VM the hard drive activity should be low like the other poster said.

So if 4 VM's is where you are headed, any of those processors with 16gb ram and a single SSD would be fine, cannot comment on a single ordinary hard drive. My comment on going i7 which has hyperthreading was more geared to future proofing, as it is unlikely a VM would tax a i5-3570k core to 100% with current requirements

[jbj81]

Thanks TPBJP. It would be great if one SSD is enough.
i5-3570K, one SSD and 16gb ram should do it then?

[jbj81]

If i choose to go with Haswell should i buy i7-4770/i7-4771 instead of i7-4770K. Dont understand all the specs in Intel processors but there seems to be more features on none-K models.
http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=930

[TPBJP]

the K versions are unlocked, so they are very easy to overclock. However i dont think you should worry about overclocking @4 VM's, and i personally wouldnt overclock and run a computer to its max using VM's because you may get instability/overheating/miss calculations etc. I actually have overclocked before for gaming but in this instance i would stay away from it.
the features that the 4770 has over the 4770k are geared to vitalization, but i highly doubt you would ever utilize them at least in the near future
the only reason i would go i7 over i5 is for the hyperthreading, but again i doubt that would even be necessary for what we are talking about, maybe years down the road...

best bang for buck is i5 for what you are looking at doing, the i7 prices are not justifiable unless you are a computer enthusiast. IMO SSD is justifiable (i think all computers should have them). Ram- IMO get at least 16gb for 4VM's, but even go as far as 32gb because ram is a pain to upgrade 1-2years down the road because you wont find the same DIMM's and will have to buy all new, also i dont think you are going to be stopping at 4VM's and if you go above 6 @2gb each you are going to need more than 16gb ram.

i feel like we are overdoing the debate of hardware selection especially if you stop at 4VM's.

[TPBJP]

and since i have turned you towards SSD's i will also add that they are still considered an enthusiast part- and with enthusiast parts (other than processors- which are always reliable) sometimes reliability is an issue. I can say that in the early days there were many flaws, and even occasionally today when a new SSD framework is released there will be bugs. I have been burned with a couple SSD's not recognizing/not booting/full failures and it is due to them being a newer technology. I will say that i like the intel drives, and i have two intel 520 series 120gb drives and they are flawless- intel took the time to program the controller of the drive and make sure it worked before release. they are probably the most reliable SSD's on the market and have a really good track record

[jbj81]

The only reason stopping for 4 VM's is the accounts. I cant run over 4 different accounts with same IP. There is only 4 supported networks where i want to play. And i dont want to use VPN's. So one server for one player for 4 different network from same ip. And if i make profit ill buy new server for 4 more VM's with different player and put it behind differemt ip. This is the plan at this point.

[TPBJP]

if that is the case you are investing more than you need to in hardware IMO
you can probably get a processor priced around $120 (like amd a10-5800k) or i3 3220(dual core) and it would be fine
a cheap matx board with onboard video
60 or 80gb ssd
cheap case
350w psu
'got yourself a stew goin'

[jbj81]

That might be true. I just dont want to wine up with hardware that have performance issues. I rather overdo it.

[jbj81]

How about A8-3870K, Kingston V300 60GB SSD, 16GB RAM. That would be cheap for me. If that runs 4VM's, 6-tables and hopper each it would be fabulous.

[TPBJP]

the site i use for a quick reference for processor speed is cpubenchmark.net
i have an old q6600, which is rated at 2975 points, which i think would be capable of running 4 vm's, but maybe not "overkill"
the a10-5800k i recommended is rated at 4694 points, and is only $120-140us so thats under 100euro i believe
the a8-3870k is 3686 points, only a little higher than the q6600
for comparison the i7-4770k is 10136 points and 3570k

one of my next projects is getting my q6600 outfitted with 3VM's running at once. that will probably be done today or tomorrow. ill let you know how it performs as soon as i can. its got a 60gb old SSD (vertex2) and 8gb of ram (ddr2) and if it can run 3 im sure any of the above processors can run 4