New build mainly for Virtual Machines

[EvilOne]

Q6700 vs 940

I would pick the 940 for a VM machine, AMD's AMD-V is sligntly ahead of Intel's VT-x in perfomance (on equal chips! I7 will still blow any AMD chip out the water).

Also try to avoid the cheaper Q8200/8200S/8300/8400/8400S intel quad core's as they lack intel VT on the chips (and wont even run window7 xp mode when it comes out).


Tried VM on my Q6600 had 3-4 OS's running on the box no problems (6gb of ram).

 

[Happy]

AFAIK, its ESX only. I might be wrong though.

Page 7:
http://www.kingston.com/branded/pdf_files/memory_provisioning_recommendations_vi3.pdf

Yeah it is Anyway you need VM Tools installed which I can't do anyway since I use a diskless folding image for both, oh well.

 

[timefalls]

What's this memory bubbling? Is it available in VMware Server 2.0?

AFAIK, its a technique used by your virtualization software that dynamically allocates RAM to your VMs as they need it, instead of just allocating the whole block of RAM that you specify.

 

[StevenRaith]

I would doubt it, ESXi is very stipped down. You would also need another PC to use as a terminal if you used ESXi.

I'd go for VMWare server if you want free and compatible with other VMware products. If compatibility isn't an issue have a look at VirtualBox. It's got multiple snap shot levels and supports multiple network cards. Something VMserver doesn't do.

I'd imagine that if the OP is building a specific VM box, he has a second machine with which to run VM Infrastructure client in.

Did a quick google of Dynamips and it looks like it's a python app to run IOS images in - so you would need to set up a guest VM of Windows or Linux, then install Dynamips within that VM - procedure is no different for a L2 or L1 hypervisor by teh looks of it.

And ESXi isn't that cut down - the hypervisor is technically as usable as the 'ful fat' ESX IIRC, the difference is in the management tools; for a basic VMserver with one machine, you don't need clustering, automated fauilover, etc - it's OTT for a single system. But if you get a VCentre [or VSphere, of whatever V4 is called] license, it will work fine with an ESXi build IME.

 

[Lanz]

i7 is much faster than both Core2 and Phenom when it comes to virtualisation.

You only have to look at the VM benchmark scores of Xeon (i7) 55xx cpus compared to previous (core2) Xeons and Opterons to see how much better they are.

If your serious about VMs, then Nahalem is king, as much of its design was tailored around Virtualisation.

But saying that, for what you want to do, I'm sure any decent Quad, AMD or Intel would be fine.

 

[emchrism]

Hi,

I did my CCNA last year and have been studying for BSCI since (am near too taking the exam now).

My setup was done for cost efficiency. I've got a Core2 Duo E7200 2.53Ghz (overclocked to 3.4Ghz), 4Gb of RAM, running Vista 64- bit and use VMWare Server 2.0.

This cpu doesn't have virtualisation extensions unfortunately but VMs still fast enough for my needs (VMs bottleneck is usually IO from my experience with our HP Proliants at work, i.e. hard drive, not CPU).

On GNS I run c7200-advanced ip services IOS which uses 256Mb of RAM. I've run up to 8 routers and a couple of linux VMs concurrently (used for Radius, DNS, TFTP, SNMP, Syslog, NetFlow, Packet Exports, Snort/Sguil) as well as linking into Vista (to run SDM, PingPlotter, VPN clients). Then there is cool tricks by linking my GNS lab onto my physical Cisco routers and switches too

The bottle neck for me is memory, my duo core doesn't get maxed out with this setup. So far on the BSCI I've have not found a lab where I've needed more than a half dozen routers (can't say if that'll suffice for the remainder of the CCNP exams).

If I were to start again I'd get a q6700 and 8Gb of memory (which I may ugprade too yet, just waiting another year to see what happens with prices in general).

Hope that's of help.

Edit: Typos

 

[gamesaregood]

I would consider Citrix Xen Server I use it and find it ideal for my needs.

Only run a Dual Core AMD 4450e with 8GB of Ram.

Its free version offers much more features than ESXi:

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=1686939

Current version is 5.5 and can be downloaded from here:

http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/lp/lp_1688615.asp#top

Its very easy to setup.

Note it required AMD-V / Intel VT to run.

I personally would go the AMD Route, much better upgrade options than a 775 based PC.