I received five Dell PowerEdge 6800 servers from another company for free. One of the servers, for example, is five years old but has 12GB RAM, 2TB disc space, and two Intel Xeon 3.00Ghz processors. This server came with Win 2003 Enterprise.
I was going to use the server as described above and install Windows 2008 R2 standard, install Hyper-V, and set up one virtual server as a starting point. Well, I was stopped dead in my tracks when I booted up the server and went into the BIOS. The processor does not support Virtualization Technology.
My options are few. Buying a new server is out of the question since the new fiscal year just started and funding is at a bare minimum....and yes I understand that I could buy a server that will have the above specs for few dollars today, but when I'm being told SpiceWorks might have the go because it costs too much you know your organization has a financial problem (just kidding on that one).
One option I've thought of is to replace the processors. I've opened up the servers and the socket for the CPU's on the motherboard is shown as "mPGA604".
Does anyone know if I could swap out the existing XEON processors in those servers with a newer 64-bit processor that would provide Virtualization Technology capabilities, or would I now be dealing with BIOS, front side bus limitations, and other issues?
Thank you for your help.