How viable is it to virtualise mutiple servers on the same hardware?

If I virtualise four servers on one hardware (for instance, three Tomcat servers on the same physical machine), can I successfully terminate three different IP addresses, hence three different HTTP address to that same physical machine? I'm trying to use it as a temporary solution for hosting the same service for three different departments pending software redesign solution and how viable is this solution.

My second question is that what would be a good VM hardware setup for this kind of scenario? My past readings into this topic suggests that there are two w开发者_开发知识库ays to achieve virtualisation, which would work best?

Thanks for your answers in advance! (Researching the possibilities meantime.)

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Yes, you can have three different IP addresses. Each server would present itself to the network as a physically separate device.

As far as hardware, that is highly dependent on what the storage, load, and other requirements of these virtual servers would be. But, you'll want fast storage, lots of RAM, and a decent multicore processor.

Look into the requirements of VMWare ESX. I believe it's open source and can be implemented for free in non-commercial settings (but you might not qualify, so be sure to check).

This article is a couple of years old, but might help you get started.

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1. Yes. You need to create a loopback adapter on the physical machine in order to get Internet access for MS Virtual PCs. I configured Virtual Win Server 2003 as IIS and DNS server that points to two ASP.NET sites on itself, and one site on Apache server that is on other Virtual PC.
2. Any CPU that has "hardware vitalization" capabilities.