Would you virtualize these 3 servers

Richard_41

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Nov 8, 2015
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I am setting up a small office for my brother. He needs to run the following servers. Would you virtualize these or use 3 pieces of equipment

1)Small Linux server running asterisk phone system (Small as in ATOM processor with 8 GB of storage is totally fine)
2)Medium Windows server running Milestone Xprotect Camera Software. He is running 10 cameras, CPU requirements are not that huge but he needs around 2TB storage here
3)Small firewall - looking to maybe run pfsense or maybe buy a small firewall appliance. goal here is to be able to give priority to his voiop phone traffic.

I was starting out looking at 1U Supermicro Atom system for the phone system. These are inexpensive. $150 used or $300 new. Then I saw someone running ESXI with asterisk and pfsense firewall on one box and that peaked my interest. That seemed interesting to me but if I want to run ESXi then I need a bigger box. then I was thinking that if I need a bigger box maybe I could put the camera instance on this box too.

On a scale of 1 to 10 being without phone or internet are a 10.. Being without security cameras is only a 5.

I am kind of leaning to the idea of separate boxes, at least for the firewall and the phone system as I don't see virtualizing them as adding any safety unless I have really beefy redundant virtual servers.
 
I might seperate out the Windows and Linux boxes. Have one server for cameras and another for phone/VPN. It might require a USB/Ethernet setup connected to a VM though. I might go for a pair of AMD Kabini systems or a pair of embedded motherboards, neither should take much power or make much noise.