About a year ago, I started planning some changes to the IT infrastructure here at the home office. For years, I have had a huge number of servers, largely to support the work I do across different platforms. However, as more and more OS seem to gravitate towards x86 and with virtualization like VMware and Parallels becoming easier to use and more efficient I've found I can easily start reducing the number of servers, and the number of platforms to, basically, one: x86.

My problem is one actually experienced by many companies; they need a server but can't afford to dedicate a single room to the task of holding the box, so it has to live somewhere in the office. Even in an office where there are lots of computers already, having a quiet and efficient solution helps to lower the ambient noise in the room.