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Lowest spec CPU for VMware ESXi?

bulldoze

bulldoze

bulldoze

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Joined
21 Nov 2012
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3
New member!

I am looking for a very cheap and most likely second hand unit that can handle a bare metal ESXi hypervisor for a lab setup. As I understand it I need at least a dual core cpu with either intel VT+ or AMD-V technology.

Does anybody know what is the oldest CPU (And therefore presumably cheapest) that could has this technology? Google has not been my friend on this occasion and has only seemed to confuse the issue!

Many Thanks!
 
You can see listed here some AMD processors with AMD-V, straight from the horses mouth :

http://products.amd.com/en-us/deskt...3=&f4=&f5=&f6=&f7=&f8=&f9=&f10=&f11=&f12=True

(I just chose virtualisation preference 'yes' on the left hand filters).

" the oldest CPU (And therefore presumably cheapest)"

Likely not the case. You would probably be best off with the cheapest DDR3 supporting CPU, because it's so much cheaper than older RAM.

This is a £30 AMD with Dual core & AMD-V tech :

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-326-AM&groupid=701&catid=1967&subcat=803

combine with this ram for £18 :

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-021-TG&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

Combine with this motherboard for £35:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-379-GI

I checked on Gigabyte's website & it supports Virtualisation in the bios.
 
Thanks for that info - I am not really a hardware guy as you can tell!

It seems that I could have come unstuck with regards to bios support but the one you identified could well make it cheap enough to be viable.

Thanks again.
 
If you want 2nd hand, I have used a really old setup before for a esxi lab, it was a Athlon X2 4400 running on a nForce 430 motherboard, you could probably source a whole system for about £60 if you're lucky.
 
That could be an option, was it painfully slow? maybe an old system like that with a small SSD shoved into it could be a workable solution.

I only need the system for the lab (and also a Red Hat KVM lab) so I am really trying to spend the minimum.
 
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