So I have used Microsoft Virtual PC and soon discovered VirtualBox which is great as it allows me to run a couple VMs on my system at anytime but recently I was shown ESXi and it is by far one of the best things I have come across in terms in virtualization.
This isn't for a company or mission critical, simply for me to learn more about virtualization and to have fun with it. Ideally I would like to have enough power, both processing and RAM to run say two or three Server 2003s, a couple XP or Vista machines and Untangle.
So some what of a small network but fully virtualized and running all through Untangle so it would assume my router was the ISP, again solely for playing and experimenting with at the same time.
I currently have a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz HT with just 2Gb DDR ram and a WD 640GP drive that I slapped together from my spare part collection and runs decent but doubt it could handle what I want.
Would running a dual or even single Xeon be overkill for this idea, how about RAM as 8Gb might be enough but this is where I am fuzzy as what I need in terms in having a good system to toy with but not enough that it dims my lights every time I hit the power switch.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
This isn't for a company or mission critical, simply for me to learn more about virtualization and to have fun with it. Ideally I would like to have enough power, both processing and RAM to run say two or three Server 2003s, a couple XP or Vista machines and Untangle.
So some what of a small network but fully virtualized and running all through Untangle so it would assume my router was the ISP, again solely for playing and experimenting with at the same time.
I currently have a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz HT with just 2Gb DDR ram and a WD 640GP drive that I slapped together from my spare part collection and runs decent but doubt it could handle what I want.
Would running a dual or even single Xeon be overkill for this idea, how about RAM as 8Gb might be enough but this is where I am fuzzy as what I need in terms in having a good system to toy with but not enough that it dims my lights every time I hit the power switch.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks!