You're going to want to get some idea of the performance required by each planned VM, and then size your virtualization host(s) appropriately. You need to consider CPU, RAM, and IO (speed, latency, etc.) Especially latency if you're going to be serving RemoteApp off of a VM.

Realistically, you'll probably want more than one machine, and shared storage. Your concerns about the processor architecture WRT SQL are kind of off-base; you're not really asking the right questions.

AMD processors VS Intel Processors in virtualization and SQL tasks
I'm reading/studying on my own a book about algebraic curves.

I'm trying to find a way for Mathematica help me with the following (the book, ISBN: 038731802X, allows me to use any CAS / program.

Here is a question:


  How many times do the two given curves intersect at the origin?  
  
  $\quad(a)\quad y = x^3$  
  
  which I can rewrite as $y-x^3 = 0$  
  
  $\quad(b)\quad y^4 + 6x^3*y + x^8 == 0 $


I can view both curves using:

ContourPlot[{y^4 + 6 x^3*y + x^8 == 0, y - x^3 == 0}, {x, -5, 5}, {y, -5, 5}]


However, I have no idea how to find the the multiplicity of the zeros at the origin. I'm really stuck.
