Bare-metal hypervisor - which one to choose ?

[it@61@sec]

I'm planning to set up my own private virtualization server at home with the following hardware setup:

Motherboard: MSI X99S SLI PLUS, Socket-2011-3
CPU:         Intel Core i7-5820K, Socket-LGA2011-3
Memory:      Max 128 GB DDR4 RAM (starting with 32 or 64 GB RAM)
PSU:         Cooler Master G550M, 550W PSU
Server box:  Cooler Master CM Force 500 Midi Tower
and some sort of water cooling system... :-)

I want to run the following OS-es:

- Linux Mint 17
- Windows 10
- Windows 7
- Windows 8.1
- Ubuntu 14.04
- and others...  :-)

On my home office desktop I want to have only a monitor, keyboard and mouse connected to a Raspberry PI model 2 using it as a thin client
communicating to the server(s) using WiFi or HomePlug.

I think the best solution would be to use a bare-metal hypervisor, but the question is:
Which one should I choose ?
(It must be a free version - no licensing).

And how should I set up the storage system ?
SSD or plain old harddisks ?

Suggestions welcome

[rproffitt]

I think this alone dashes your hope of using Microsoft's free HyperV.
"Hyper-V 2012 can only be managed by Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 or their successors."

I was going to note Proxmux but then I read http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1820817 which lead me back to VMWare.

https://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor

You have an abitious goal so I take it this is not your first rodeo.

[it@61@sec]

It's the first time I'm trying to build a virtualization server, but I have been working with data centers (before virtualization) since 1984. So I THINK I know what I'm doing. :-).

VMWare seems to be the best choice, I agree.

Will there be any problems using my Virtualbox HDDs on VMWare (type VHD).. =

[rproffitt]

Sorry but I bet https://www.google.com/#q=vmware+vhd answers the use or rather conversion from VHD for use on VMWare.

I think you're getting close to making it happen. But I'll share I went down that path of a central VM system and disposed of it a few years ago. It was fun, learned a lot but nothing compares to the power of the dark side. Whoops, I mean that I went back to running what I want on a nice laptop.

[it@61@sec]

My main goal is to free space on my office desktop.
Then I want to be able to test different flavours of OS'es in a "real" environment.
But of course: I could use this system as a desktop PC, and use host virtualization instead.. :-)
(BTW: VirtualBox only supports four CPU-cores as far as I know..).