What is the cheapest you can buy PCs that can support 8 GB of RAM? One might have thought it was a simple question, and only minutes from shopping online, you can understand. Unfortunately, this has become another project, and I am far from being the answer.
Why would anyone want such a machine? Any 32-bit version of Windows can not use beyond 3 GB of memory. If you need to effectively utilize the 8 gigs of memory you need a 64-bit operating system. I really the one I use right now - my Mac OS. But to get a Mac with everything from memory means to get more for their Mac Pro desktop. And while you can save money by getting a Mac Pro uses, when you loose with enough RAM and hard, there is not much more of a negotiation.
The reason for this RAM to house a collection of virtual machines for testing. VM consume a large amount of RAM, and there are situations where you want to be able to run more than one virtual machine at a time for testing network products. I've been using the desk with VMware Fusion on my Mac, and a collection of virtual machines, now that I use in my tests. But my Windows PC that has 2 GB of RAM, so I really can not run more than one virtual machine at a time. I need something more powerful. A few months ago I had a client who has sent me a DVD with seven different virtual machines that are used for a series of tests.
So I thought of calling a system builder friend of mine and asked me specifically what I have called a "white box ESX PC" - VMware ESX is an operating system and virtual server is designed for that purpose, to run a lot of virtual machines on one physical piece of hardware. And although there is technically 64-bit ESX, you can work very effectively with a large amount of memory.
But getting the right setup was difficult because it is not designed to run its virtual machines on a hard drive that you find in your average office. There are some discussion forums on this subject, but we were in uncharted territory.
See what I was going, HP loaned me one of their ProLiant servers with the ESX server pre-installed. (Most of the leading manufacturers of PC servers have a number of pre-installed machines, both ESX or Citrix 'XenServer, but these are not low-end machines.) It took me weeks of effort to get the right software for VMware authorized to operate and put the VMS box. I realized I was not going to ESX to work for me - it was too much in the air And although VMware ESXi version to give away a freebie called, I was too tired at this stage to try it this way ..
So I went online and search to see if I could ask a desktop PC with 8 GB of RAM and be satisfied with Vista 64-bit operating system. First I went to Dell, especially since buying a lot of Dells and can find my way on their website. Back in the day were many megabytes of RAM, Dell was one of the first vendors to sell PCs with 4 MB installed. But despite this history and knowledge was not easy to find your website for a concert PC 8. Lenovo has a line, the ThinkCentre M58, which sells for about $ 1200. HP I could not find on their website, which is weird because when I went to Newegg's website, I found more than 20 configurations, some of which were perfectly capable machines HP, all for around $ 1000 .
The other problem with the operation of a large number of virtual machines is more intense you want the processor inside your PC, which supports the so-called virtualization extensions Intel-VT or AMD-V. Neither the Company, which is very clear that its dual-core Duo this or that have these extensions. What I know is the office of aging Dell I bought three years ago does not help. Sigh.
