Hi guys,

First post, and I'm not sure I'm posting in the right place...

I've been running an Ubuntu server for a while now, and the PC I used recently stopped working for good, so I'm starting to plan my new build. I'm thinking of going the ESXi route, and I'm seeking any advice you can provide.

My plan is to use the new PC as a HTPC, a print server, a web server, a MPD, a media server, and a VoIP phone server (Asterisk). Here's how I'm thinking I'll do it:

• MB: ASRock 970 EXTREME3
• CPU: AMD Bulldozer FX-4100
• RAM: Kingston KHX1600C10D3B1K2/16G 16GB Kit 2X8GB 1600MHz DDR3
• GPU: MSI Radeon HD 6450

I also have a 2 TB disk that I think is ext4 formatted (if not, ext3) which has all my media, and some other disks laying around that I could use (250 GB-320 GB).

I think I'll install ESXi on one of the smaller disks, and store the VMs there as well.

Software wise, it should be fairly simple to implement the web server and the phone server, but I have some questions for the other parts of my build:

• How can I access the data on my 2 TB disk? Can I give direct access to an Ubuntu virtual machine that would share it through samba, and that would run my media server (plex)? Should I setup a freenas VM that would have direct access?
• Will it be easy to connect my printers (USB) to my print server VM?
• Should it be fairly easy to setup VMDirectPath to connect my GPU to the HTPC VM (either an Ubuntu VM running Plex over Wine, or a Windows VM running Plex directly)? Will I be able to easily connect the receiver (USB) for a remote?
• Will I be able to direct the sound from my MPD VM to the MB's integrated sound card?

Thank you in advance, and please excuse any grammatical errors; English is not my mother tongue.

I read a lot, and decided to pull the trigger on the hardware I specified (except for the RAM, which I replaced with another 2x8GB module that was on sale). I'll report how everything goes in the coming weeks. If anyone has a last minute recommendation, it's not too late to change my order. Thanks!

maybe you can install esxi and VM system all in the small disk ,and use RDM way to create a small file-mapping to the large disk , and add it to the VM , mount the large disk .
this won't destory the data on the large disk,because you didn't write any thing onto it

I thought about it, and I decided it'd be simpler to backup the data on my media disk on other disks, then use it as a standard datastore on which I can transfer back my media.