Best PC hardware for Virtual Box

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Gogsley

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May 9, 2015
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Hello everyone, so my mom needs a new PC for virtual box for her new job. Her job is to test applications and networking while having 5 and even more virtual boxes running at the same time with the same programs running on each box.

She needs a machine with a 16Gb at the least of Ram with expansion to 32Gb in the future.
Can anybody please help me decide which CPU, mobo, etc is great for this task? I already have a spare graphics card with a 2Gb.

The case, GPU, optical drive, and OS are not included in the budget, since we have these already.

Also, the cheaper the better! We both live in Canada, so keep in mind with the CAD currency. Budget is less than $400

Edit: I know $400 is too little, yet alone RAM is half of the budget. Please give suggestions on how much I should spend on this and which components
 
Solution
garrettk4
Why not buy a server? Sure it will be loud and big but cheapest way to fulfill your needs.
Take a look at: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R710-SFF-Server-12-Core-2-26GHz-L5640-24GB-H700-4x-300GB-2-5-HDD/381710363514?epid=219506227&hash=item58dfb5eb7a:g:G6MAAOSwBnZbK6Nm

Slap a free copy of esxi 5.5 or 6.0 on it. Add additional ram, raid those drives together or put more drives in.

Or if you don't want to do any of that here's a better option: https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-POWEREDGE-R710-LFF-2x-SIX-CORE-X5650-2-66GHz-64GB-RAM-6x-TRAYS-H700/132245803397?hash=item1eca76d185:g:kZ0AAOSwmoVaqCDA

Then load up 2012r2 and use hyper v to spawn all the VMs.
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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Your requirements do not fit in the budget of $400.

Just the 16GB RAM is 1/2 of that.

5 VM/s open and running at once? Not in 16GB RAM, unless these are all minimal Linux installs of 2GB each.
Each VM needs a chunk of dedicated RAM.

This is my current system running 4VM's and the host Win 10 Pro.
G7Ro10y.png


20GB RAM consumed.
 
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G

Gogsley

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May 9, 2015
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Say I increase the budget to a couple hundred more, what would you suggest? I need a good idea on which processor I should be choosing for her.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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What OS's will be in these VM's?
If Windows, they pretty much require 4GB each.

My current system is an i7-4790k, 32GB RAM. Full specs under my avatar to the left.
 
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G

Gogsley

Reputable
May 9, 2015
15
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My mom sent me this by email, maybe you can help me out here.

In a Host machine I need:

Create Virtual Lab with 5 virtual machines installed in Host Machine ( Hyper-V / VMware / VirtualBox)
Windows 8.1 Enterprise / Server 2012R2
16GB – 32 GB RAM
50 GB hard drive free space
1 NIC
Additional OS installed in virtual machines: Windows 8.1; Windows 7; BackTrack/Kali

Thanks
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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1. "50GB" is obviously not enough.
You need a 1TB drive for this.

2. Your guest OS's will need min 4GB RAM each. So the whole system will need 32GB RAM.

3. What OS do you currently have for the host system?

For the whole system, with current 2018 parts, you're looking at near $1,000.
 
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garrettk4

garrettk4

Honorable
May 31, 2012
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10,810
Why not buy a server? Sure it will be loud and big but cheapest way to fulfill your needs.
Take a look at: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R710-SFF-Server-12-Core-2-26GHz-L5640-24GB-H700-4x-300GB-2-5-HDD/381710363514?epid=219506227&hash=item58dfb5eb7a:g:G6MAAOSwBnZbK6Nm

Slap a free copy of esxi 5.5 or 6.0 on it. Add additional ram, raid those drives together or put more drives in.

Or if you don't want to do any of that here's a better option: https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-POWEREDGE-R710-LFF-2x-SIX-CORE-X5650-2-66GHz-64GB-RAM-6x-TRAYS-H700/132245803397?hash=item1eca76d185:g:kZ0AAOSwmoVaqCDA

Then load up 2012r2 and use hyper v to spawn all the VMs.
 
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