One of the wonderful things about Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V is that any driver that was written for Windows 7 will also run in Server 2008 R2! As such its very easy to take any Window 7 compatible PC (with a processor that can do hardware assisted virtualization like the AMD A and FX series) and turn it into a Citrix VDI-in-a-Box proof of concept (POC).
In the video below you can see me doing just that with a HP 6465b notebook (AMD A6 powered) which has been enhanced with a OCZ Agility 3 SSD.
Read on as well for a list of parts that cost less than £265 (exVAT) that you could use to run your own proof of concept for 3-4 VDI users!
Case – Novatech Corona Micro ATX – £21.65 – Cheap and cheerful case with a PSU
SSD – OCZ Vertex 4 128GB - £91.99 – Powerful latest generation SSD
RAM – Corsair Vengeance 8GB – £37.49 – Just some RAM plain and simple
Motherboard – ASRock A75M – £44.16 – Comes with 6Gb/s SATA ports to take best use of the SSD
CPU – AMD A8-3850 – £66.65 – Quad core CPU with gaming quality graphics built right on the chip
One of the great things about VDI-in-a-Box is that you can move your testing environment to production just by pointing your new server at the testing one for it to go and migrate the images/setting/so on over.
Best of all you will have a new quad core, SSD powered PC to play around with after!
To learn more about Citrix VDI-in-a-Box click here.
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