Building A Bot Server (Part 1 of 7)

Albert's Post on September 7th about specializing your bots instead of just having more bots which all do the same thing has got me thinking about doing this myself in the future.I've pondered off and on about a foil-only bot, a Standard only bot and a few other more obscure specialties.

However the way I run the bots on my desktop wouldn't allow for additional bots to be placed on my wife's desktop and the bot machine I was given some years back decided to blow up so placing additional bots there would not be feasible.

While I do have standing offers from friends to be the recipient of older machines to use for my fledgling bot empire, I simply do not have the physical space to house all these machines just so that I can run one or two additional bots. So I would have to build a new server machine from the ground up if I wanted to pursue this venture.

Before I begin with the specifics of all the details, I am going to make a few assumptions:
I'm not going to be recommending brand names or stores. This isn't the place for that.

I'm going to assume things like mice, keyboards, CD/DVD player and monitors are freely available. You can run a server without a monitor and mice and keyboards are easily obtainable if spares are not hanging around.
I'm going to assume that the reader is proficient in installing software and operating systems.
I'm going to assume a familiarity with VMware or other virtual machine software like Virtual PC.
I'm going to assume a willingness for the reader to do this. This is not going to be a simple project and this can easily take over a weekend. While there will be shortcuts and things one can avoid and those will be pointed out, this is meant to be a more thorough walk-through than “just move your bots onto the new machine.”

With that out of the way, we'll begin those details next time.