Being a VMware guy, I needed a VMware cluster to train and learn on. The old cluster of a DL385 and a NL40 wasn’t really cutting it and was LOUD. Therefore, I decided it was time to upgrade. I was interested to play with the concept of nested VM’s and build a virtual cluster inside my HP ML310e. So in essence, what’s it like? It’s sexy, very quiet and power efficient (as denoted by the e, whereas p means performance, in terms of more powerful CPUs, etc.) The model I have is the base model, Xeon E3-1220-V2 with a single SATA 7,200 RPM disk and maxed out to 32 GB RAM. This is fine as it is just a test lab. It would also make an excellent small office server as well if an additional disk where added. The standard 2 GB of RAM is a bit miserable but you do have another 3 slots for your RAM unless like me you’re a VMware nerd who crams in as much RAM as possible. The hardware is ideal for a nested cluster. The Xeon E3-1220-V2 has both VT-D and EPT (Hardware look aside buffer in other words) onboard. This means it has all it needs to deal with nested VM’s in hardware rather than software, so the performance is still excellent. So, let’s start with the cosmetics and the outsides. The G8 has a face lift and sports a cool metallic grill. One of the things I didn’t like about it was the fact that to actually get into the box you now have to use a key on the side of the unit. That in itself is not so bad, but you once you have the lock in the unlock position you can’t remove the key,...