I'm working on building a home server based on esxi 4.1 for consolidation, as well as a playground for testing of applications. For this, I'm looking to have SATA RAID, GigE, and obviously will need video support for at least the building and configuration of the server, until I have it online and can manage it remotely.
With that, is there a preferred motherboard out there that includes a esxi 4.1 supported LAN Chip and RAID Chipset as well as onboard video (the i5-700 series cpu does not provide video support -- so I would need an onboard video chip). If not, is there a mobo that people have used that includes 2 of these 3 items -- I can obviously pop in a PCI/PCI-X card for any other functionality.
I am looking at a i5-700 series cpu and at least 8gb of RAM. For storage I am looking at most likely deploying 3 1.5tb or 2.0tb drives in a Raid-5 configuration. Any other comments are appreciated.
Thanks.
-Brian