Hi all

Just wanting some advise / guidance on what is the best/recommended software to use for Virtualising a machine I have here at home.

Ive got a box with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit (MSI P55A-G55 MB, Intel i7-870 CPU, 8Gb DDR3-1333 RAM and 1 Tb in Raid 1, plus 500Gb for OS etc).

The box is going to be running Mediaportal TV Server in a headless setup. To keep it simple my plan is to run the HostOS as Windows 7 Pro so that I dont have to do any PCI Passthrough  to get the Media Server working virtualised.  THe mediaserver has 3 x PCI cards (2xDVB-S and 1 x Analogue) so figured its just easier to have it as the Host.

The CPU and MB both support VT-d and Vt-x ... so a hypervisor type approach, in theory, is a possibility.

What I want to do is replace my current big, loud, power hungry Small Business Server with a 2011 Server in a virtualised GuestOS on the above machine.  From what Ive read VMWare "may" allow this to be installed... but Windows 7 is not one of their recommended/supported HostOS's, although it appears it may have been not long ago.

Does anyone have an experience/opinion on VMware vs Zen vs VBoxetc  for the above scenario? The load on the SBS is pretty minimal ... ie its just me using it :)  What would people suggest?

Cheers