Anyone might not agree with me but personally I am completely lost in the new virtualization technology.
I think I will never install a sme server on ordinary hardware any more.
But I guess that it depends a bit on who you are, and what your needs and requirements are.
For me it is "only" a home server, but actually I have visited some companies that has less data eqipment than I have in my home.
For home server purposes virtualization using vmware works fantastic. I am running this on a quite ordinare PC that I have buldt self with a dual core AMD processor and 4 Gig of RAM. (It can take 8 Gig so I might add some more one day.) The host system is Centos 64.
Normally and on daily basis I use to be running a virtual Smoothwall firewall + a virtual Sme server in server only mode + a virtual installation of Windows 2000 Professional, as a "onserver windows client". Then there is also these virtual servers that normally and on daily basis will be closed down so dey don't consume any resources: One or two extra copies of the SME server for testing purposes. A Contos 32 server. A Ubuntu 32 server. And a FreeBSD 32 server.
As the Centos 64 host system and the sme "production server" has been kept unmidified it has runned all the time (6 months) with zero bugs or problems. This is actually the most stable and uncomplicated server installation I have had ever. (Becaus there has never been a need for modifying the host system or the "sme production guest". (There is an other alternative virtual sme server for all testing purposes.)
The virtual SME server is modified by adding a Asterisk server RPM, that maintains the iptelephony server function. There has not bee a single technical issue with this server function either. (When I started testing this I was near 100 percent sure that iptelephony on a virtual general server could never work well, but I think it is time now to admit it does.) Actually when I'm out and traweling I can log into my (sme) iptelephony server from the other side on the world, and still everything work like normal, like when I am home. People some times think I am joking when I call them with the local id or answer the local telephone and tell them that I am somewhere else in the world. Log on from PC is done via UDP 53 and IAX protocol. This comes trough most places where a SIP connection does not work. (Because of the complexity of the data transmission related to the SIP protocol.)
Most modern PC's will do a home server job quite well. If virtualization is the choise, then it will be needed more memory than for an ordinary server installation. For home use noise and heat might be a quite important factors.
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