Hello,

I want to build a linux box that runs a kvm hypervisor for many other linux vms including but not limited to dc's, email servers, firewalls, switches, content filters, routers, etc..

Essentially building a Software Defined Network (A real one) from scratch.

From what I have been able to gather, CLFS or possibly tinycore, arch, something lightweight should work good just to run the hypervisor and (key point here) allow me to image the entire network from it's root.

Everything will be centralized onto internal RAID10 storage, there will be several nic cards for things that need to connect to the network via wires, and it should do everything a network does (provide tunnels, routing, switching, etc..) and everything from the app world (file backups, img backups, snapshots, HA, FT, etc).

I want to be able to ship an entire corporate network in 1 (technically 2) cheap, hardware redundant x86 box. Anyone want to help?

I do a similar type of thing for my training setup, but only using l2/l3 switch VMs and vanilla server VMs. No email servers, firewalls, etc.
I've seen many people doing your type of thing on github, using all sorts of VMs and apps containers, all tied together with Vagrant and Ansible (or Chef, Puppet, etc).
If no one responds, you should take a look there.

Thank you so much, my friend!

I don't see any forums on Github, could you point me in the right direction please?

Thanks!

Github is not a forum.
I haven't the time to sift through Github for you to see if there are any projects that might suit your needs.
I'll leave that for you to do.

I don't think imaging the entire setup is a good idea, as you lose control over the overall configuration.
I build my virtualized data center using Vagrant, Ansible and KVM.
By using Vagrant/Ansible, you can change anything in the VMs by just sending out the updated Vagrantfile or Playbook.
It will also keep every setup uniform so they do not deviate from a known working state.

Here are some links you'll probably find interesting:

Orchestration of VMs using Vagrant:
http://www.thisprogrammingthing.com/...e-vagrantfile/

CloudRouter:
http://cloudrouter.org/features/

Using Linux Containers like Docker might also be advantageous as distributing new applications do not affect the underlying OS.

Cheers.