Virtual Cisco Lab

[ShaneBlackwell]

Hi All,

Well Im sure this is one of those questions that keeps getting bound about from time to time but I cant seem to find it on the forum (it might be me being to specific or board with my searches).

Im trying to find out if the PC spec here is OK to be used with VMWare ESXi 4 (or VSphere Hypervisor as its also referred to), to then run a virutal Cisco Unified Call Manager / lab for use with my Cisco training.

I was somewhat disappointed to find out that my current PC (an AMD quad core processor with 8GB RAM etc was not the correct processor type to load the product, it is also suffering from a very dodgy fan and a bit long in the tooth).  Hense the reason why Im looking to replace the PC but on a shoe string budget.  Oh it is also cheaper than buying second hand Cisco kit and filling up my spare room with a mass of switches, routers and cabling etc (thats more to save me justifing the mess to my girlfriend).

I was hoping someone might be able to say if the above linked PC from HP would meet my needs and be OK to run a virtual server or two?

Thank you for reading and any responce in advance.

Shane

[DSTAVERT]

In most cases the Processor and basic motherboard are not a problem. It is the embedded components that aren't supported or don't install well. I would visit http://vm-help.com and look through the whitebox HCL for suitable platforms. Some of the low end HP servers (ML110 I believe) are well liked as a lab platform. 

[ShaneBlackwell]

Thanks for that DSTAVERT,

I've checked it out and theres a good few HP servers in my price range, they are lacking RAM so would need some extra getting but still shouldnt be a problem.

I would like to know if the server would be OK with Cisco as well but would probably have to ask on the Cisco forum, unless any buddy Cisco bods happening to be viewing this post?

Cheers,

Shane

[xzyan]

I was able to install call manager 7 on vmware workstation 7 with no problem.