ESXi 5 + BL25P (G1) in a lab setup?

[dcsmrgun]

Hi there,

Today I took delivery of two decommissioned HP enclosures with 16 BL25p G1 blades (~2005/2006-era), all maxed out with 16GB ram, dual Opteron 285 processors. This sounds like an ideal lab setup since I'm just wetting my feet with virtualization. HP certainly hasn't qualified this ancient setup for any recent ESXi releases nor do I realistically expect any support, but is the hardware itself too out of date to set up an ESXi 5.0 environment?

The use would obviously just be for testing vSphere functionality so I don't expect this to be a powerhouse virtualization setup.

Would love to hear from anyone with firsthand experience in a setup like this. Thanks!

[dhabbetichandra]

As this model supports Virtualization.. so you can implement your lab setup on vsphere.

[psplnalin123]

bl25p not supports esxi 5.0 please find the refere link

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/vcl/result.php?search=bl25p&searchCategory=Server

[TomPacso]

Dear psplnalin123

It is unsupported, however my present Opteron chips are supported until ESX 3.5 yet they can run 4.1

I am planning to "upgrage" to 2 dual core 285 Opterons. I choose these old chips becasuse they are cheap but still provide a fair speed.
I really could not find any specific, tested information that if it support LAHF/SAHF  (Therefore ESXi 5) or not.