[GTALUG] Thinkpad T420 as a VM host

[William Park]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 12:11:29PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 06:01:46PM -0400, Alex Volkov wrote:
> > So I replaced a 4GB memory stick in my Thinkpad  T420 with an 8GB one
> > bringing the total amount of available ram to 12GB with maximum of
> > 16GB.Even though Lenovo say that the laptop supports only 8 GB of ram total.
> > 
> > As it stands now this 4 year old machine becomes a pretty cost-effective
> > platform for virtualization:
> > 
> > * Intel Core i5-2410M
> 
> I just checked, and apparently that model does to all the vt-x stuff,
> so yes good for VM handling, and even better, apparently with a bios
> update it can do aes-ni which can be very handy too.  Linux microcode
> handling might also handle the job if no bios upgrade exists.

It's difficult to judge by specs or benchmarks alone.  I have 8-core
(AMD FX-8320) and 16GB (DDR3-1333), and it's fast when doing nothing,
but it just chokes on load.  Curiously, there is no lag with mouse under
any condition.  And, parallel kernel compile (make -j8) is in the
ballpark.  So, I don't know what's going on.  All I can say is, I'm
going with Intel on next machine.
-- 
William