Hello,
I apologize for my ignorance, I am new to virtualization and may have need for it in a special case I will describe below.
I have an XP rackmount computer with either a i5 or i7 processor and it runs proprietary software to communicate to proprietary hardware over ip. There is a limitation with the proprietary hardware so I need two instances to talk to two "master" boards, they can't do two instances so I either have to buy two machines and have them KVM to a Monitor and mouse or I was thinking of putting ESXi on the machine and using the physical to virtual tool and now I would have two instances running on the same machine. By default the current systems are not resource intensive so I do not see multiple instances being too much for the PC hardware.
So assuming the hardware is compatible (CPU, RAM, HD, etc.) can I put ESXi on the system and have a hosted virtualization system witha VM on the same system, would I need to buy any license, is this a bad idea? Also can I download and test this for free?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you.