So I got my evaluation license for ESXi 6.0 a while back and tried installing it on the various systems I had available (no real servers, alas.) Despite having some hardware that was top tier at one time, the only thing that ESXi would install cleanly on was an ancient consumer-grade Dell Inspiron 570. No problems with network or SATA drivers or VT-d/IOMMU, just installed - no muss, no fuss. However, this thing is pretty limited. It has a triple core processor, and maxes out at 16GB of RAM. Now I was looking online and saw some old Dell Precision workstations selling for peanuts. The models I was looking at were the T3500 and T5500, but I'm not sure if ESXi would install on either of those boxes. (I almost got one with a Xeon W3520, but researched that Xeon and found that it does not support VT-d.)
So I'm on a shoestring budget and can't afford a real server, but I might be able to swing one of these old workstations. A second option that occurred to me would be to upgrade the triple core processor in the Dell Inspiron 570 to an Athlon/Phenom quad CPU. However, the Xeon would have 4 actual cores plus 4 logical cores thanks to hyperthreading. And if I really wanted to, I could upgrade to a six-core/12 thread Xeon like the L5640.
Comments welcome...