Building A Bot Server (Part 5 of 7)

In our continuing series on building your own bot server, we discussed why a solid state drive is better than a spindle based one.

Video

Surprisingly, one doesn't need a video card for a server bot. One can get by just fine with the default video card included with the motherboard.
But what about the requirements of Magic Online which states that you need DirectX 9 or higher? And doesn't MTGO Library require some resolution higher than what a motherboard's video can deliver? And isn't the whole point of that video so that you have an emergency backup in case your video card goes kaploey?

What about it? We're not running MTGO or the Library on the machine itself. We are running MTGO and the library UNDER VMware and VMware will supply the necessary software-based video driver to deliver the resolution nicely. I've run YATBot and MTGO Library under VMware quite nicely. Besides, one doesn't even need a monitor to run a server. One is helpful for actual tweaking or diagnosing problems, but one is not need for actually running.
So save yourself the money: One doesn't need a video card for this endeavor.

Windows

The sad thing about Windows is that tries to do all things for all people and therefore is cumbersome and takes up way too many resources. You can successfully run VMware Server with a couple of bots underneath. There are even a few sites dedicated to trying to slim down Windows so that only the barest services are ever run. (Do you really want those printer drivers and fonts on a server machine?)

But what if I told you there are alternatives to putting Windows on your server machine? Have I piqued your interest? Tune in next time to find out the answer.