If you're going to be using Oracle then I would probably steer away from using Windows at all for the server(s) you setup, Linux is much much better. At work we use Red Hat Enterprise which you can get free licences for, or, if you can't get a free copy, CentOs is pretty much the same but completely free.

Oracle also do their own virtualisation product called VirtualBox but, afaik, it has to sit on top of an OS rather than a bare metal install. Could be useful for building some workstation VM's on a suitably big PC or laptop.

https://www.virtualbox.org/

Having been there and done that many times now I can say it's never worth buying older hardware like this. Ever. Over the course of a year or two it's probably cheaper to rent a server / VM of better spec. Cold.

i have 2 of these and i dont think they are that bad. i would look at your energy Renewal :smile:

I've got 8 of these (much more ram, and much better processors though) and they aren't as loud as people would have you think, especially not the g7's, they make me a tidy sum :stuck_out_tongue:

I actually got a T5500 from these guys to, more so for playing around but they've got a decent deal up here
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-T5500-Hex-Core-Intel-Xeon-E5645-2-4GHz-48GB-DDR3-Workstation-Barebones-PC-/401122326236?rd=1

Unless you don't have to worry about the power usage I'd go for more modern kit.

Might be fine for a lab server but no way I'd want to use one in the datacentre as the power costs will be horrible.

I've got a load of these spare at work, decided against bringing a couple home due to heat, noise and cost to run.

What would you suggest, something like a DL380p Gen8? These G7's aren't exactly old and from my experience not too bad on power usage.