N8YX
05-23-2012, 08:19 PM
Here's a project for you folks that may motivate you to experiment with this concept too:
I have a number of computer-controllable rigs and peripherals here in the shack, with more planned for the future. At present there are two BCD-996XT scanners and I'm going to add two more plus a pair of BCT-15Xs for non-APCO25 monitoring.
There are three R7000s. Two each IC-751A and R-71A. (The R71A/R7000 pairs can be set up in ScanCAT to facilitate continuous coverage if desired).
A Paragon II and soon, an Omni VI. Two KAMs, two DSP-599zx and an M-7000 multimode decoder...with an M-8000 to be incorporated if I can find one.
Thus, we have a requirement for at least 21 serial ports. But wait; there's more: Let's say we want to run soundcard RTTY/PSK/SSTV on the two rigs which won't be hooked to the KAMs...plus we might want to stream the Ten-Tec's and the Bearcat's audio (a total of 8 sources) over the network. We're now up to 10 sound card interfaces.
This equates to a bunch of computers! :shock:
I recently looked into multiport serial to Ethernet adapters, and know of USB-to-Ethernet adapters which could be used to interface a USB sound card to a network. We can now virtualize both COM ports and audio devices across a network. And link them into virtual machines quite handily.
What I'm thinking of doing is building three VM hosts up and concurrently running several images of Win-XP, Win7 or ham-radio-enabled Linux on two of them. The third will be a standby and host/controller for a big NAS setup...say, 20-40TB eventually.
Figure that one instance of ScanCAT can control one receiver (or one Icom "pair") at a time, and I can comfortably run two instances in a P4-2GHz/1GB RAM class machine. Likewise, each active session can support one data interface - KAM/DSP/M-7000. This gives us a total of 8 sessions needed for general scanning duties. Figure another four for master/slave operation of the Ten-Tec or Icom gear during contest operations...twelve active VMs max, though the scanner-control sessions could be stopped when contesting.
This gives us a 6 sessions per VM host requirement with the NAS host being able to run two in an overflow capacity. Figuring a 1:1 host/guest memory allocation, we get 12GB for an all-XP-guest complement to 48GB for an all Win7-guest complement for the primaries, and an 8GB/16GB requirement for the backup.
Storage...each XP image will be around 20GB and each Win7 image around 100. Figure 60-100GB for the host OS and we have a low-end space requirement of at least 200GB, with an upper limit approaching 1TB or more per box. This stuff has got to be fast and will ideally be operated in a 6-drive configuration, with the host OS being on a Raid 0 array and the guest OS images being hosted on RAID 10.
I'm thinking SATA-3 for the controllers...
The NAS must meet all the requirements of the other two systems plus it should have enough internal SATA ports to support at least 8 and possibly 12 drives; all run in RAID 10 or RAID 50. This system will be used as a general backup repository for everything else in the network, including host OS backup images.
Access into the VMs will be via thin client or RDP on the primary LAN, and I'm looking at Foxconn or similar embedded systems for this purpose...though the general-use/gaming PCs can also be called upon to access the hosted sessions.
The VM hosts will be dual-homed and the secondary interfaces will be used to transfer images and other data between systems; a dedicated router will be configured to facilitate this traffic.
So...I need hardware. I'm thinking i7-class or better CPUs. I currently have a couple nice ATX full tower cases and a big drive array case which can support a newer model motherboard/cooler.
Give me some suggestions as to what I should stuff these with. I don't need much in the way of video hardware, as I won't be gaming. The host OS will be Win2K3 Server, Win2K8 Server or some form of 'ix...possibly ESXi. I do need lots of fast SATA ports per mobo, or suggestions regarding add-in cards which support RAID at various levels.
I have a number of computer-controllable rigs and peripherals here in the shack, with more planned for the future. At present there are two BCD-996XT scanners and I'm going to add two more plus a pair of BCT-15Xs for non-APCO25 monitoring.
There are three R7000s. Two each IC-751A and R-71A. (The R71A/R7000 pairs can be set up in ScanCAT to facilitate continuous coverage if desired).
A Paragon II and soon, an Omni VI. Two KAMs, two DSP-599zx and an M-7000 multimode decoder...with an M-8000 to be incorporated if I can find one.
Thus, we have a requirement for at least 21 serial ports. But wait; there's more: Let's say we want to run soundcard RTTY/PSK/SSTV on the two rigs which won't be hooked to the KAMs...plus we might want to stream the Ten-Tec's and the Bearcat's audio (a total of 8 sources) over the network. We're now up to 10 sound card interfaces.
This equates to a bunch of computers! :shock:
I recently looked into multiport serial to Ethernet adapters, and know of USB-to-Ethernet adapters which could be used to interface a USB sound card to a network. We can now virtualize both COM ports and audio devices across a network. And link them into virtual machines quite handily.
What I'm thinking of doing is building three VM hosts up and concurrently running several images of Win-XP, Win7 or ham-radio-enabled Linux on two of them. The third will be a standby and host/controller for a big NAS setup...say, 20-40TB eventually.
Figure that one instance of ScanCAT can control one receiver (or one Icom "pair") at a time, and I can comfortably run two instances in a P4-2GHz/1GB RAM class machine. Likewise, each active session can support one data interface - KAM/DSP/M-7000. This gives us a total of 8 sessions needed for general scanning duties. Figure another four for master/slave operation of the Ten-Tec or Icom gear during contest operations...twelve active VMs max, though the scanner-control sessions could be stopped when contesting.
This gives us a 6 sessions per VM host requirement with the NAS host being able to run two in an overflow capacity. Figuring a 1:1 host/guest memory allocation, we get 12GB for an all-XP-guest complement to 48GB for an all Win7-guest complement for the primaries, and an 8GB/16GB requirement for the backup.
Storage...each XP image will be around 20GB and each Win7 image around 100. Figure 60-100GB for the host OS and we have a low-end space requirement of at least 200GB, with an upper limit approaching 1TB or more per box. This stuff has got to be fast and will ideally be operated in a 6-drive configuration, with the host OS being on a Raid 0 array and the guest OS images being hosted on RAID 10.
I'm thinking SATA-3 for the controllers...
The NAS must meet all the requirements of the other two systems plus it should have enough internal SATA ports to support at least 8 and possibly 12 drives; all run in RAID 10 or RAID 50. This system will be used as a general backup repository for everything else in the network, including host OS backup images.
Access into the VMs will be via thin client or RDP on the primary LAN, and I'm looking at Foxconn or similar embedded systems for this purpose...though the general-use/gaming PCs can also be called upon to access the hosted sessions.
The VM hosts will be dual-homed and the secondary interfaces will be used to transfer images and other data between systems; a dedicated router will be configured to facilitate this traffic.
So...I need hardware. I'm thinking i7-class or better CPUs. I currently have a couple nice ATX full tower cases and a big drive array case which can support a newer model motherboard/cooler.
Give me some suggestions as to what I should stuff these with. I don't need much in the way of video hardware, as I won't be gaming. The host OS will be Win2K3 Server, Win2K8 Server or some form of 'ix...possibly ESXi. I do need lots of fast SATA ports per mobo, or suggestions regarding add-in cards which support RAID at various levels.