Good deal/low price ESXI server

[N3RO]

Dual L5320 (8C/8T) @ 1.86 GHz (Core 2 platform) would be slower than a single FX-8320 (8C/8T) @ 4 GHz in everything...
Dual L5520 (8C/16T) @ 2.26 GHz (Nehalem) would be better in some scenarios, some not. If you'll have 16 machines powered on at all times then okay, but CPU usage still will not be maxed out for most workloads. This platform is rather expensive as well.

If you need to run 16 VMs on the hypervisor with an 8C/8T CPU, then use vSphere to load balance 16 machines without much issue.

The main thing is RAM, you'll want to allocate as much RAM as possible to each machine depending on the OS, 16GB is a minimum for best performance.

What exactly are your goals?

I'll start with 1 L5520 and upgrade later to a second one.

It's possible to run regular DDR3 sticks or only ECC?

Introducing to vSphere, testing multiple Windows Server within different scenarios, fail-over options, etc. and other OSes, and run 2 DaaS. Nothing heavy-loaded. Things I just cant' do on my laptop.

Thank you