New Xeon E5-2600 v3 Servers (HP / Dell etc)

#Chri5#

#Chri5#

#Chri5#

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I know the ProLiant Gen 9 are due for launch this month (17th September was an event I got invited to).

IT Pro have a review of the PowerEdge T630 here.

QPI speeds have been boosted to 9.6GT/sec and the new server CPU family comprises 19 members. The HCC (high core count) group tops out with the mighty 18-core 2.3GHz E5-2699 v3 which has a 45MB L3 cache and supports 2,133MHz DDR4 memory.

Between the Advanced, Standard and Basic groups you have choices from 6 to 12 cores and various options for 1,600MHz to 2,133MHz DDR4 support along with 6.4GT/sec up to 9.6GT/sec QPI speeds.

The T630 on review came with a pair of 14-core 2.3GHz E5-2695 v3 Xeons delivering a remarkable 56 logical cores. The price we’ve shown initially seems high but these top end CPUs each cost £2,785.
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56 logical cores in a tower server :D

One of the best bits to me is this:

Support staff will like the faster boot times with Dell claiming this can be as low as one minute. Memory capacities will affect this and we timed our server at 86 seconds to reach Windows Server 2012 R2 boot-up and 112 seconds in total to reach the login screen.
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One thing that becomes boring when building new servers is how long a Gen8 ProLiant takes to POST. Nod off whilst waiting and you know you'll miss the option to smack F9/F11 for the boot menu or Intelligent Provisioning :rolleyes:
 
I wouldn't be surprised if VMware change there socket licensing model to core counts in the future, as everyone will be replacing their quad socket servers for duals when they offer this many cores.
 
Lanz said:
I wouldn't be surprised if VMware change there socket licensing model to core counts in the future, as everyone will be replacing their quad socket servers for duals when they offer this many cores.
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I'm surprised they haven't already, everyone else and there dog seems to have already!
 
Dell servers take an age to boot up too with its 'Lifecycle Controller'. I'd even say HP Gen8's boot up faster!
 
The Gen8's are damn slow to boot! I've got access to a Gen9 machine and it seems pretty good. Not done much testing yet but its got some good features!
 
I spotted something the other day saying the Gen9 ProLiants finally get a UEFI BIOS. I got caught out by a G8 recently when I wanted a single 8x2TB (RAID6) array on a DL380e. As the G8s are classic BIOS, so no GPT boot support.
 
I can understand servers taking longer to boot, generally lots of network cards, RAID, and a ton of memory to check for errors during POST, but it does feel a lot longer than it reasonably should.

I have a lot of respect for HP and the deployment tools that have been provided for Proliant servers over the years. The firmware disc's were brilliant, and 'smart start' was pretty damned good, and even better once they released the tool to write them to a USB stick. But the addition of 'Intelligent Provisioning' to the Gen8's I just don't understand.

Still, all this is a moot point for us. We are almost entirely VMWare'd so a long POST when we carry out scheduled ESXi upgrades every few months is much less a concern that it would have been traditionally.
 
To be fair, Intelligent Provisioning is a pretty good tool on a small scale otherwise its pretty meh.

Gen9's do indeed come with UEFI which is good! Had a play around with it last week, changing settings with no reboots :D:D:D:D:D

@#Chri5# There are ways around that. What we tend to do is create a small array (100GB) for boot, then the remainder as the larger array we needed. This does mean you have 2 arrays over a single set of disks but allows you to 'boot' from GPT. Sort of.
 
I like Intelligent Provisioning for getting firmware updates done before the OS. Some of the Smart Array controllers included RAID6 support as standard on a later firmware (was a licensed cost option), so upgrading before creating the array saves messing later.

I hadn't thought of that going down that route Ringiho. I ended up ditching two 2TB drives in favour of a boot mirror with 450GB 10ks.
 
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Yeah that works too! I don't tend to like doing the two arrays on single disks thing but in some situations it has turned out to be useful!

DL380e rear LFF kit is the way forward though ;)
 
Little_Crow said:
I have a lot of respect for HP and the deployment tools that have been provided for Proliant servers over the years. The firmware disc's were brilliant, and 'smart start' was pretty damned good, and even better once they released the tool to write them to a USB stick. But the addition of 'Intelligent Provisioning' to the Gen8's I just don't understand.
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100% agree -- intelligent provisioning is just one more thing that needs to be kept up to date, and in practice I find it clunky and unforgiving. SmartStart was so much better.
 
Will very high core count parts like the E5-2699 v3 (18C/36T) be widely used in servers? I can't imagine it represents good value compared to the 4-10 core parts, so wouldn't space have to be at a very serious premium to justify it?

Coming from a background in HPC where dual 12C nodes are common, I could see these 18C parts just about making economic sense since they're typically run at full load, and you get benefits by having as powerful SMP nodes as possible to alleviate communication, but I didn't think this was the case for most servers?
 
From a software licensing point of view, more cores is often better because you pay by physical processor. Oracle are certainly an exception to this, SQL server 2014 might be as well.
 
SoundsGood said:
What is this exactly? HP website has a totally useless description. I'm guessing you can put 2 drives in the back in addition to the front sockets w/out a SAS expander?
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Yup! You get two LFF drives at the rear. They hang off of the backplane of the front drives (cables included). It is a great feature!

joeyjojo said:
Will very high core count parts like the E5-2699 v3 (18C/36T) be widely used in servers? I can't imagine it represents good value compared to the 4-10 core parts, so wouldn't space have to be at a very serious premium to justify it?
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You'd be surprised really. At work we have nearly 80 blades running E5-2690 CPUs (2 in each) and in means we can get quite few VMs per core with good performance. All depends on your situation though I guess!
 
Gen9 ProLiants have appeared in QuickSpecs.

The DL180 returns to replace the DL380e. The DL380 G9 has the option of 2 x SFF rear or 3 x LFF rear. LFFs mean losing PCIe slots 4 to 6.
 
The G9's look like they could be a bit of a savior for me. I've had to spec up a server that will need 2 more disks than can physically be fit into a G8, so the rear disk kit could be the answer without having to hook it up to external storage.


Also, I'm just deploying a physical Windows Server and have remembered why I disliked Intelligent Provisioning so much. Though my original gripes are fixed, there are new ones that meant I wasted 40 minutes on it and ended up just installing straight from the DVD - Bring back SmartStart!

> No support for UK keyboard layout. Great fun when you have a password to set whose presses are different on a US to UK keyboard - potentially leaving you with a Server login prompt that you can't login to.
(I confess that I think this is the same on Smart Start. My gripe is that on the screen you set the password, just above it is where you set the language and keyboard settings of the OS, maybe to lure you into a false sense of security that those settings also apply for the password field?)

> My main gripe. It straight up didn't work.
The sysprep process for 2008R2 crashed with an error that no product key was available in the unattend file. It
a) Didn't prompt me for one in the wizard, and
b) We use KMS so wouldn't have put one in any way.

A frustrating 40 minutes wasted, all the more annoying since I redeployed 2 G6 servers using SmartStart just 3 weeks ago and it worked flawlessly.
Probably of little interest to anyone, but I felt a little venting was in order.


##########
(My original gripe with IP was that the keyboard driver was awful. You had to type v e r y slowly and make sure every keypress was registered)
 
Little_Crow said:
The G9's look like they could be a bit of a savior for me. I've had to spec up a server that will need 2 more disks than can physically be fit into a G8, so the rear disk kit could be the answer without having to hook it up to external storage.


Also, I'm just deploying a physical Windows Server and have remembered why I disliked Intelligent Provisioning so much. Though my original gripes are fixed, there are new ones that meant I wasted 40 minutes on it and ended up just installing straight from the DVD - Bring back SmartStart!

> No support for UK keyboard layout. Great fun when you have a password to set whose presses are different on a US to UK keyboard - potentially leaving you with a Server login prompt that you can't login to.
(I confess that I think this is the same on Smart Start. My gripe is that on the screen you set the password, just above it is where you set the language and keyboard settings of the OS, maybe to lure you into a false sense of security that those settings also apply for the password field?)

> My main gripe. It straight up didn't work.
The sysprep process for 2008R2 crashed with an error that no product key was available in the unattend file. It
a) Didn't prompt me for one in the wizard, and
b) We use KMS so wouldn't have put one in any way.

A frustrating 40 minutes wasted, all the more annoying since I redeployed 2 G6 servers using SmartStart just 3 weeks ago and it worked flawlessly.
Probably of little interest to anyone, but I felt a little venting was in order.


##########
(My original gripe with IP was that the keyboard driver was awful. You had to type v e r y slowly and make sure every keypress was registered)
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Mate, I've had every single one of those issues (including the slow keyboard). What a shambles of a product. I mourn SmartStart every time I have the misfortune of building a Gen8 (very rarely now, mostly VMs).
 
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