If you have been considering building a home lab to prepare for the VCP5 exam, HP has an inexpensive solution that will give you the hands-on experience you need. As of this writing the HP Proliant MicroServer series Retail Price was just $329.00 US Dollars.
Although not officially listed in the VMware Compatability Guide, VMware vExpert Simon Seagrave, of www.techhead.co.uk, just reported that the “installation process goes through without a hitch both to local internal USB pen drive or local disk. I have tested this with the final RTM version of vSphere ESXi 5.0, not just the beta builds, and can confirm that the CPU, storage controller, memory and network card are detected without a problem…” Take a look at his post Running VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0 on the HP Proliant Microserver for further details.
Mike Chin posted an extensive seven page reiew with a ton of photos at silentpcreview.com
Check out the HP Proliant MicroServer series – Overview at hp.com and find pricing at shopping.google.com.
