Since a month I have the following hardware setup.
- - Intel Pentium G620
- Intel Desktop Board DQ67OWB3
- Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter
- Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARX, 2TB
- Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT
- Fractal Design Core 1000
- be quiet! Pure Power L7 300W
- Kingston KVR1333D3N9K4/16G
The server is running ESXi. At this moment the box is running the following virtual machines:
- - file/backup server on ubuntu 11.10,
- sharpservice (my backend HA server) on ubuntu 11.10
- sharpcontrol (my webfrontend HA server) on ubuntu 11.10
- sharpservicetest (my backend HA server) on ubuntu 11.10
- sharpcontroltest (my webfrontend HA server) on ubuntu 11.10
- plugwise on winxp
- pfSense a firewall distribution (work in progress, not fully functional yet.)
- gitorious (a version control system) on ubuntu 11.10
The energy use of the box is roughly 36-38W (until the moment the mono worker under apache derails then my peak usage is 52W). My main reasons to build up this virtual machine is to have the important processes in my house under more finegrained control. All these virtual machines were previously running as processes on my media centre. Which worked until I decided I needed to upgraded some software. Very often I could then play sysadmin for a while because some of the fundamental processes in my house stopped working.
I am quite happy with the virtualisation I have currently done. I have a complete test environment on which I can test my changes to my HA-software before I bother the rest of my family. (I once deployed a software version which left the hall light downstairs in a one minute blink mode, my wife was not happy

I also see some additional opportunities to automate some more. The Esxi has a cool Api, so I am building some software that all my computers in my house will show up in my HA-system. So I can control them (e.g. switch them on and off). E.g. the test environment only has the up and running when I am home.
I was wondering what other users on this forum have as virtual setups, why they have it and what they do with it. Some users have blogged about it (Digit, Maarten) but probably more people have setups like these. I hope we can have some cool discussions here about virtualisation and where you can go with it.