New Server - Core Components?

Goksly

Goksly

Goksly

Soldato
Joined
5 Mar 2003
Posts
10,769
Location
Nottingham
Ahoy,
I am a developer by trade but my boss looks after the server side of things but I think he has been out of the loop hardware wise for a while and might be out of his depth.... but anywho, he has been put in charge of buying a few new servers. The budget for 3 new servers (2 web and 1 database) is around £7.5k.

Now I saw a spec he got from a company and it looks as though the CPU is based on the core 2 duo (but obviously the Xeon version). I was pushing for the Xeon counter part to the i7, but he said he phoned someone from Misco and they said they aren't out yet, which I find hard to believe!

As I said - I'm not a server guru, far from it. But if we are going to get some new hardware, I want to make sure it's at least in the correct ball park. Any pointers for the core components?
Thanks.
 
That's a nice budget for once.

Depending on storage requirements, I'd be looking at the HP ProLiant DL360 G6 or DL380 G6. They use the quad core Xeon L55xx, E55xx or X55xx CPUs. To quote HP:

For the Intel 5500 Series, the letter preceding the model number indicates the performance/wattage of the processor. "X" denotes High Performance/Wattage; "E" denotes Enterprise Performance/Wattage (Mainstream); and "L" denotes Lower Wattage.
Click to expand...

The 5500 series uses the 45nm Nehalem core, like the original Core i7s.

Wiki lists the future Xeon processors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_future_Intel_microprocessors#Xeon_DP.2C_Quad-Core

The 32nm Gulftown parts are due in March according to that page. Worth waiting for? Maybe, depends how long it takes for the server vendors finish validating designs and get stock on distributors shelves.
 
The Xeon equivalents of the i7s are out, I've got 4 of them in 2 servers in my racks!

These are going to be citrix servers, but the 2 boxes (DL360 G6s 2 x 2.26Ghz Nehalem Quads, 8gb RAM and 2 x 80gb SSDs) came to about 6k for both

Could you give us some idea of scale for these boxes - how big are the dbs, how many users, how much load are the web servers likely to be under, what OS (and does the budget include software licenses?)

At a guess, I'd look at 2 x Dell R410 or DL360 G6 with a single nehalem quad, 4gb RAM and a mirrored pair of whatever storage takes your fancy - should be about 3k for the pair.

The DB server is potentially more difficult, as above depending on scale but look at the DL380 G6. Dual CPUs, 12gb RAM and 8 SAS HDDs should give plenty grunt and configuration flexibility for the remaining budget
 
Can't do much better than that suggestion - just buy something decent from a reputable vendor (HP/Dell basically) rather than a built by some guy in a shed job...
 
FWIW I've used some Sun servers recently - awesome bits of kit and you'll generally get them to match Dell if you try hard enough :)
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. For the DB we've got to get a single cpu (due to licencing issues) so I want to make sure it's a good one :) The boss always buys from HP tbh, but don't know why he is having a hard time getting one with the CPU list I supplied (from the wiki page listed above).

Will keep proding him in the direction of some of the posts above :)

@iaind:
We have a single database (about 5gb in size) that contains the core system the business is build on and the accounts information (not sure of size).

There are about 5 people in accounts, but the main load will be coming from the 'core' system. We have about 150 engineers who download and upload information from the pdas (what I would class as light load) and then 50 or so people in the office running reports, which usually hammer the db the most.

At the moment (I'm not 100% sure on the hardware), I think its running the P4 HT server equivalent (~3ghz or there about) and most likely running on a single hdd.

External web server: used by all the clients to query the core system as well as the 150 engineers in the field.

Internal web server: used bu the 50 or so people in the office.

Personally I think we are all out of our depth when it comes to small business hardware. I have no doubt the configuration will be less than perfect, but I just want to make sure we have the right hardware.
 
ouch 1 proc for SQL will suck, maybe you should spend a little of that cash on getting the better license? Maybe you could get 1 web server instead?
 
mikeh501 said:
ouch 1 proc for SQL will suck, maybe you should spend a little of that cash on getting the better license? Maybe you could get 1 web server instead?
Click to expand...

Get a 6 core Xeon? To be honest even a quad core will handle that sort of database size and access pretty well in most environments.
 
Aye tbh the database server doesnt really go over 40% at the moment... the company will not pay out for the additional cpu licencing and the hardware; I think the boost to a new high end server replacing the existing one (at least 3 years old, if not more) should see the company through any growth we see in the next few years and if the server is a dual socket, we can upgrade if we really need too (I'm assuming you can leave a 2nd socket empty?).

With the amount of usage we see, the server is never really handing more than 1 query at any given time, so 4 cores / 8 threads should easily be enough?

Before I joined the db was a proper mess with pretty much no indexing so the database was at 80% most of the time, if not higher.
 
SQL is much more concerned about disk I/O.

6 drives - RAID1 (OS and Logs) + 1 x 4-drive RAID10 container
10 drives - RAID1 (OS and Logs) + 2 x 4-drive RAID10 containers.

Basically lots of RAID10 for I/O, unless you want to go down the SSD path :]
 
I love the overspecification in this forum sometimes!

Just because six core Xeons with HT are available, doesnt make them necessary. Databases that size have been around for ages, why do we need 12 CPU cores with hyperthreading to run them now?

I've run much more demanding databases on a dual 2.6Ghz Xeon with a 1CPU SQL license with great results.

Get the IO right, configure it well and it will be fine.
 
iaind said:
I love the overspecification in this forum sometimes!

Just because six core Xeons with HT are available, doesnt make them necessary. Databases that size have been around for ages, why do we need 12 CPU cores with hyperthreading to run them now?

I've run much more demanding databases on a dual 2.6Ghz Xeon with a 1CPU SQL license with great results.

Get the IO right, configure it well and it will be fine.
Click to expand...

Totally agree, there are still plenty of win 2000 and even NT 4 server chugging away for small companies, handling their sql, exchange, isa, office, sage, internet, and plenty of other things.
 
For the normal servers, you should be able to get
2 x Dell R610 with the 2.26GHz Xeon (with HT) for 8 virtual CPU cores per machine
8GB RAM

Then for the database machine
1 x Dell R610
1 x 55xx Xeon
16GB of RAM (or 24 is very cheap, due to 12 x 2GB slots)
2 x 73GB SAS in RAID1 for main OS and backups
SLC SSD drive for your database

You should be able to get those for for £6k

Edit: OK, go for a faster CPU on the database machine and drop the second if you've got licensing issues. Look at getting a good quality SLC for your database since it's so small something like an Intel X25-E.
 
Last edited:
iaind said:
Just because six core Xeons with HT are available, doesnt make them necessary. Databases that size have been around for ages, why do we need 12 CPU cores with hyperthreading to run them now?
Click to expand...

Whilst I agree for the most part, overspeccing saves money in the long term. Constant replacement, upgrades, migrations to newer hardware costs a lot of time. For most businesses, the cost of the raw hardware is a small part of the IT budget.
 
daz said:
Whilst I agree for the most part, overspeccing saves money in the long term. Constant replacement, upgrades, migrations to newer hardware costs a lot of time. For most businesses, the cost of the raw hardware is a small part of the IT budget.
Click to expand...

It does, but you have to do so with a bit of consideration and forethought. The implication above that the DB would struggle with a single CPU was a bit daft. My SQL server with about 100gb of databases is running at 11% average over the past hour - that's a VM with 2vCPUs, a single CPU SQL license on a 2 x 1.9Ghz Quad host.

As rz30 said, there's plenty people running ancient servers with similar databases without issues - it's all about good planning and configuration, not just throwing the hardware with the biggest numbers at it. The money would be much better spent on management cards, redundant PSUs etc etc - leaving a CPU slot empty for expansion if it ever becomes necessary.

The advice about I/O being the biggest priority is sound - memory is also important too. I'm not sure I'd bother with SSDs at this stage, a properly configured array of 15k SAS drives will probably perform just as well or better
 
iaind said:
The advice about I/O being the biggest priority is sound - memory is also important too. I'm not sure I'd bother with SSDs at this stage, a properly configured array of 15k SAS drives will probably perform just as well or better
Click to expand...

You'll get two 15K SAS drives capable of 200 IOP/S between them if you're crazy enough to put them in RAID0 for the same price as a 32GB SLC SSD, capable of 1000+ IOP/S. Seeing as the dataset is so small, I'd consider it quite worthwhile. :)
 
Alternatively, you might not even come close to saturating what 15k SAS drives are capable of, and you'll have spent more money on smaller storage
 
Yamahahahahaha said:
Here are some figures on the Dell SSDs vs. their 2.5" Mechanicals.

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/server-poweredge-11g-ssd-en.pdf
Click to expand...

The problem is you haven't read that pdf, or atleast understood it. This is for a DB server, SQL. In that chart SSD is bearly doing anything better than traditional SAS drives. Infact, looks like performance is no better for this application type. Now consider having two SAS in raid 1 vs single SSD. You have similar application specific speeds, and two drives incase of single drive failure. Not to mention much more space for other tasks.

Now why would you go SSD? Look at the performance graphs exhcnage (DB) and SQL logs....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom