The cheapest raspberry pi clone for my neefs

[paupav]

The title should be "The cheapest PC for my needs"
I have started php programming last year and stopped because currently I'm in the period of preparation for the state exams. Its very easy. I usually claim to be C++ programmer and php is very similar to C languages as I can see. So, I've realised that programming website is very small part of the job.

I wanna make my own serverS on one PC, to learn about virtual machines, docker etc. Also firewall seems to be bigger problem than I thought. My idea is to make headless server with LAMP stack on CentOS (I'm not idiot i know how to use terminal).

So, I need help chosing the cheapest solution for setting up my educational environment. What are minimal requirements. Is ARM chip enough for virtual machine/s?

[torsionbar28]

You'll need an AMD chip with AMD-V, Intel chip with VT-x, or a VIA chip with VIA-VT. So no, you cannot use raspberry pi or any ARM machine. You'll want 8 GB of RAM minimum, since the CentOS 7 installer requires 1 GB, so that's the smallest VM you can create. You may be able to have a minimal test environment with 4 GB of system RAM, but it'll be tight and you'll be limited in what you can do.

Your best bet is to find from ebay, an old server board that already has cpu and memory and use that to build a barebones PC. I've seen plenty of older Opteron and Xeon board with a CPU and 8 GB sell for ~$50 on ebay. The Supermicro H8SMI-2 and H8SCM are two high quality Opteron server boards that can be had for cheap on the used market, and there are plenty of others.

Good luck

[paupav]

Thank you for your reply. I have Q6600 processor lying around somewhere. I will try to find correct motherboard.