Cheap Virtualisation Box

Ringiho

Ringiho

Ringiho

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Joined
8 Dec 2008
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1,394
Location
Basingstoke, Hants
Evening people!

I'm looking at expanding my skills in various bits of software and want to build up a cheap ESXi box to run my VMs on, if it can be done on the cheap.

Looking at the AMD bundles on the site, you can get a reasonable amount of power for a good cost. As ever, the General Hardware Guru's can probably conjure up something more awesome ;). So what are my requirements?

  • Reasonable amount of CPU power
  • 8GB RAM, upgradable to 16GB
  • MicroATX or MiniITX if it can be done cheap!

What would you guys suggest for this?
 
What are you going to be running on the VM's and whats you budget?
As with all PC stuff there is nothing good and cheap so its best to pick a budget and maximize the build for the money.

As for ITX it comes at a significant premium but M-ATX should be ok for a build to budget.

I guess define cheap and we can go from there
 
Fair point on ITX. I guess it's a waste of budget.

I just need CPU, RAM and a motherboard for around £150 I think. Maybe a little more if needed.
I'm going to run 2008 R2 and maybe some 2012. Mostly going to be looking at lync and exchange.
 
Ringiho said:
Fair point on ITX. I guess it's a waste of budget.

I just need CPU, RAM and a motherboard for around £150 I think. Maybe a little more if needed.
I'm going to run 2008 R2 and maybe some 2012. Mostly going to be looking at lync and exchange.
Click to expand...

Put as much memory in it as you can afford. I just use my desktop machine, but with 32GB and a 12 thread 3930k it isn't a problem with VMware workstation.
 
Ringiho said:
Well I use a 2500k in my desktop so in reality I could just bump the memory up. Hmm.
Click to expand...

As long as you're not doing something silly like assigning 4 vCPUs to each VM, then all you need is a boatload of RAM.

I found that running my VMs on an SSD made a massive difference. I use linked clones in VMware Workstation to save on disk space, and the VMs perform very well on my aging Xeon 3450.
 
Yeah true. Looking at 16GB kits it is only about 50 quid. If I pair that up with my existing 8GB that'll be plenty.
 
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