I learned about the benefits of extended page tables recently, and would like to know other specific features to look for in a processor to improve virtualization. I had a support ticket open with vmware recently about vm vs physical performance with the same hardware, and their bottom line is that no EPT support on our CPUs made a big difference. Our Dell rep is investigating the possiblity of swapping the current processor, but from what I've seen there is no cpu with ept support for the host we have (PowerEdge R710).
To be clear, we are nowhere near maxing out the cpu resources on any of our hosts, so it really comes down to the feature set. If we decide to appease the hungry hungry chip gods with cold hard cash, are there any additional features we should be looking for along with EPT?
Thanks.