Build an Affordable Virtualization Server for Thin-Client Computing - First, the CPU (
Page 2 of 9 )
CPU
One of the first decisions we had to make, which also drove many of our other decisions, was regarding processing power. Of course, we could have gone the route of picking the most powerful and fastest processors around, but we chose to focus on efficiency and bang for the buck. After all, most small business applications are relatively lightweight and have low overhead. Just bear in mind that desktop virtualization will not be the answer to those working with video or CAD programs, but pretty much anything else is fair game!
If one low-cost processor would be good, then two would be better. We went with a pair of AMD's 1.9Ghz Opteron Quad Core 2347 HE CPUs. Why those? With a street price of well under $400 and power usage of just 55 watts, the 1.9GHz CPU proves to offer a lot of bang for the buck, without high heat and high power usage.
