I've been out of the whitebox arena for awhile, purchasing pre-built dell or hp systems. I'm interested in any ideas for a whitebox linux server with dual or quad core, 4-8GB of ram, to run vmware on. It needs to be able to see SATA or SAS disks, and at least 2 nic ports/cards.

Thanks for any advice.

Check some CPU and motherboard pricing at NewEgg. Almost anything you select will be compatible with Linux. The second nic is the only unusual item you want.

I took a quick look at NewEgg. An add in PCI Express nic card for the second nic is $33, which seems excessive.

I looked at motherboards supporting AMD dual and quad core CPUs. Restricting to those that include a second nic cuts your choices from over a hundred down to 8. But they look like reasonable choices and not significantly more expensive (certainly not $33 more) than comperable motherboards without the second nic.

Almost any current motherboard has SATA interfaces on board and Linux supports them.

Brandname servers are better suited for virtualization, so I'd stick to them if possible at all.