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Sunday, November 23, 2014

Best Case for Best Buy Tablet (Cheapest DigiLand DS7 Android Tablet)

Now that Best Buy is selling their great value DigiLand DS7 tablet for just $39 on Black Friday someone asked me what the best case for it is.

This UniGrip case looks like it is perfect to me; it is a super cheap case for a super cheap tablet. Why spend more than the price of the tablet just to get a case. This isn't an iPad and so this case would be ideal:


This DigiLand DS7 Android tablet is an amazing value with Bluetooth and GPS both built-in, and even a built-in FM radio tuner too!

If you have any comments please let me know and if you have any other questions which you'd like me to answer for free please send them to Ben Dash at ben.dash@gmail.com

Biggest 1080p TV for 28.7 Wide Entertainment Center

Someone asked me what the biggest TV that would fit into a 28.7 inch wide entertainment center was.

It's a very tight fit but there are a few 32 inch 1080p TVs that will fit within that small space. The TV with the safest bet seems to be the 31.5 inch Phillips 32PFL5708/F7 with dimensions of 28.6 x 7.1 x 19 inches:


If you want to risk the even tighter fitting 32 inch options then the VIZIO M321i-A2 seems to have a very thin bezel with even smaller dimensions of just 28.6 x 7.5 x 18.8 inches. The VIZIO is actually slightly cheaper than the Phillips and has more features too:


Have fun with whichever TV you choose!

If you have any comments please let me know and if you have any other questions which you'd like me to answer for free please send them to Ben Dash at ben.dash@gmail.com

Smallest Virtual Machine Home Host Server for OpenVZ, LXC, VServer, BSD Jails

Someone asked me what the smallest virtual machine home host server is.

If you're using containerized virtualization, as I described in my previous answer here (Cheapest Virtual Machine Host Server), then you do not need to worry about using a CPU that includes hardware virtualization features like VT-x or AMD-V. If you're just needing container-based virtualization like OpenVZ, LXC, VServer or BSD Jails then you can use a very small PC indeed. How small? How about Gumstix small...


Small enough for you?

Details about how to set up OpenVZ on this tiny PC can be found here. Details about how to run LXC on ARM can be found here

Of course, if you want, you can do the same with a slightly larger, but much more practical, Raspberry Pi too.


If you need x86, but still need low power and no moving parts, then the DMP EBOX PCs are really interesting.

If you have any comments please let me know and if you have any other questions which you'd like me to answer for free please send them to Ben Dash at ben.dash@gmail.com

Best Flushable Cat Litter

Someone asked me what the best flushable cat litter is.

I really dislike scooping the cat litter but a couple of years ago we ran across a brand of flushable cat litter which dramatically improved the chore. Unlike the litter we had previously used this one is made out of discarded corn kernel cores and so you don't have to throw it in the trash when it's used; you can flush it or compost it instead. So it's environmentally friendly for multiple reasons. Appropriately, it's called World's Best Cat Litter and it's probably the first time that such a grandiose product name is actually telling the truth:


Once we started using it we immediately noticed a drop in the smell and it's much less dusty than normal cat litter when it's being scooped too.

If you have any comments please let me know and if you have any other questions which you'd like me to answer for free please send them to Ben Dash at ben.dash@gmail.com

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Cheapest Virtual Machine Host Home Server for Proxmox, KVM, OpenVZ

Someone asked me what the cheapest virtual machine host home server PC is, and what virtual machine hosting software to use.

Anyone who knows me knows that I REALLY like to save money!

When it comes to virtual machines, there's basically 3 types in order of fastest to slowest and least flexible to most flexible:

1 - Ones which run on the same kernel as the host operating system (Containerized virtualization, e.g. OpenVZ)
2 - Ones which run on their own isolated virtual hardware that rely on the host hardware's virtualization features (Hardware assisted virtualization, e.g. KVM)
3 - Ones which run on their own isolated virtual hardware that do not require host hardware virtualization features (Hardware virtualization, e.g. QEMU)

Containerized virtualization is very very fast, the guest virtual machines run basically as fast as the host PC. The only problem is that the guest runs in the same kernel as the host operating system, which means that a BSD container guest can only run on a BSD host OS and a Linux container guest can only run on a Linux host OS; however, on they run very fast and use very little resources.

Hardware assisted virtualization can run any guest operating system on the host PC, provided that the guest operating system runs on the host CPU. The problem is that it depends upon the host CPU providing virtualization features, many CPUs do but some do not.

Hardware virtualization can run any guest operating system on the host PC, even ones that use a completely different type of CPU. The problem is that this total system virtualization entirely in software is slower.

If you just want to run x86 CPU virtual machines on your desktop PC then you would probably want to use a virtual machine host application like VirtualBox, Parallels, or MS Virtual PC. Those applications provide a convenient GUI to launch and configure your desktop operating system based virtual machines, however, you will likely want to host your server operating system based virtual machines on a dedicated server so they can continue to run even while your desktop PC is not; this is where software like Proxmox comes in.

Proxmox makes it REALLY easy to manage hundreds of server operating system based virtual machines using both containerized OpenVZ and hardware assisted KVM. You would typically use OpenVZ to host Linux virtual machines, because it's faster and less resource demanding than KVM, and you would use KVM for non-Linux virtual machines. Proxmox has all the enterprise features that you need including live backups and live migrations, both for OpenVZ and for KVM, and high availability clustering all for the great price of... completely 100% free.

Now that the software is handled, let's answer the original question; what's the cheapest virtual machine host server PC?

If you're only needing containerized virtualization for OpenVZ containerized virtual machines then you do not need your CPU to include hardware assisted virtualization features, i.e. VT-x for Intel or AMD-V for AMD. If, however, you need hardware assisted virtualization for KVM virtual machines then you will need to choose a server which has hardware assisted virtualization built-in.

The cheapest PC that I've seen recently that fits this requirement is the Zotac ZBOX-ID18_U which is available for less than $100:


This mini PC has an Intel Celeron 1007U CPU which only uses 17 watts of electricity; not only is the PC cheap to buy but it is also cheap to run. Despite this though, it has hardware assisted virtualization and can also support up to 16GB of RAM. So this makes for a very capable low powered virtual machine host ideal for running many non-CPU-bound virtual machine guests, i.e. ones that don't depend on having a very powerful fast CPU.

If you have any comments please let me know and if you have any other questions which you'd like me to answer for free please send them to Ben Dash at ben.dash@gmail.com