As part of my Unified Communications technical readiness (and my general fascination with OCS and Exchange 2007 UM), I've been working on building out a virtual environment at home that uses my VoIP phone number, and eventually farms it out to OCS and Exchange UM.

The pieces I need:

• A PBX.  I've chosen to go with the Linux-based Asterisk PBX on this one, namely because I'm too cheap (ha!) to shell out the cash for a real Nortel CS1000 PBX.  Can't imagine why.
• A domain controller
• A system running Exchange 2007 with all four roles (Mailbox, Hub Transport, Client Access, UM)
• A system running OCS 2007's front-end role
• A system running OCS 2007's mediation server (for voice) - could be the same box as the Exchange server.
• A system running Windows Home Server
  (Okay, yes, WHS isn't required in any of this, but it looks cool and I want to try writing some home automation software for it.  The bits that came with my existing computer controller sucks out loud.  And doesn't work with Vista UAC.  And doesn't run as a service, so I have to be logged on for it to turn my lights on and off.)

Hmm.  Not particularly interested in buying 5 systems, power them, find room for them in my garage, network them, etc.  So, with the launch of Windows Server 2008, I decided that I'd make 'em all virtual.

I've been working on the virtual machine for Asterisk (and the required SIP gateway to get SIP from UDP to the TCP flavor that Exchange/OCS like), and have that nearly complete.  I can get SIP traffic from the VoIP provider, and it correctly passes it off to my analog telephone adapter (ATA) which makes the house ring.  Cool.   But I've got 5 systems that still need to be set up and virtualized.

To avoid overloading my already overloaded personal home PC, I went to Dell's web site and picked up a Dell Inspiron Desktop 530, and configured it as such:

• Intel Core 2 Quad Processor, Q6600, 8MB L2 cache, 2.4GHz
• 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 667MHz
• (1) 500GB SATA drive, 7200rpm
• (... the other usual stuff, CD/DVD, networking, no modem, no floppy)

Configuration price tag was $1,168.  There were some discounts I got, check with your local Dell rep to see if you get any discounts too, so it came to just above $1k after tax and shipping to my house.

Looking forward to it showing up.  I've got the RTM bits for Windows Server 2008 sitting around, waiting for it to ship and arrive.  The thing I'm most looking forward to is consolidating the four servers I have in my garage now into one, maybe two, and having the rest of the world not know its virtual.

I'll post a follow up once it does arrive and I start playing with it.  I'm really excited to fire up WS2008 on it, though, and take it out for a spin.  Stay tuned.