My original home lab, three years old now, included two PC's running virtualization software, with Intel core 2 quad CPU's and 8 GB RAM each. While browsing for a replacement, I found Didier's Shuttle SX58J3 review . I researched some alternatives, but decided to go for the SX58J3 as well, fitted with 12 GB RAM and i7-970 CPUs, hexacores with hyperthreading. shallow: depth is critical in my telco rack. reduced height: I might get 4 shuttles in the same space as 2 minitowers earlier. They're actually slightly wider, but not by much. 12 GB per server is 50% more than the old lab (16 GB is supported but slower) the Intel core i7-970 CPU gives 100% more MHz than the old Q6600. They are much more expensive, truth be told. But being Westmere generation, they support vSphere4.1 features like DirectPath I/O and Fault Tolerance. I can re-use the PCIe dual gigabit adapters I had in the old lab. One real problem so far: in BIOS v100, I couldn't change any setting without rende...
plenty of grains to pick