[ubuntu-uk] Bare Metal virtualization on older Xeon hardware

[Rob Beard]

Hi folks,

At work we're looking at server virtualization, both to give us a bit 
more redundancy against hardware failure and also to try and cut down on 
our power requirements a bit by getting shot of some older servers (P3, 
early P4's).

Now we already have two IBM x Series servers which are going on about 4 
years old.  The idea is to maybe replace these with something a bit 
newer and then re-use them for less mission critical uses.

These servers have the old P4 based Xeons in them running at 3GHz. 
According to Intel's web site they don't support Intel-VT technology but 
they are 64-Bit capable (IIRC they support EM64T).  In the past I've 
played around with VMWare Server running on top of Linux (and Windows), 
in fact at home I have it running happy on my server with a couple of 
VM's chugging away.

What I'd like to do though is use some bare metal virtualization.  I 
gather the newer virtualization software such as Microsoft Hyper-V, 
VMWare ESXi and KVM all require Intel-VT technology or AMD-V.  I 
wondered if anyone knew of any bare metal virtualization software that 
supports the older CPUs?

I'm pretty certain an older version of ESXi did although when I last 
tried it a couple of years back it didn't support the hardware I tried 
it on (a bog standard Phenom X4 desktop PC).  I can't for the life of me 
find a download link for the older ESXi software (which I believe VMWare 
were starting to give away).

So before I give up, does anyone know of anything that would be suitable 
which doesn't require Intel-VT or AMD-V?

Ta,

Rob