Replacing HP 360/380 G7's. CPU question.

[opethdisciple]

So our server currently have Xeon X5675 Cpu's

We are thinking of replacing them with 360/380 G10 servers which have Xeon Silver 4110 CPU's in them.

Do you think this is a worthy upgrade?

 

[Armageus]

How long is a piece of string?

Depends ultimately on what software you run, whether you are cpu limited, and whether the software scales with more cores.

Edit:
E.g. If your software is still largely single threaded, then your older Xeons run at a higher clockspeed (3.06Ghz vs 2.1Ghz or 3.46Ghz vs 3Ghz with Turbo) and even taking into account architecture improvements with the 6 year newer processor, may still not be much faster.
If that's the case then you would need something like (Gold 6128 Processor 3.4 GHz 6 Core, Gold 6144 Processor 3.5 GHz 8 Core) to gain a meaningful increase in Single Thread performance

If your software does scale well with additional cores, then I would still be looking at higher spec CPUs (e.g. 12 core 2.1Ghz Silver 4116, or almost any of the Gold/Platinum Xeons), as I don't think there you will see a huge leap in performance with only 2 extra cores.



Quick Spec here with available CPUs:
https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/Getdocument.aspx?docname=a00008159enw

 

[Deleted member 138126]

It looks like the 4110 is about 30% more powerful than an X5675, but it will be doing this while consuming a LOT less electricity. You also get DDR4, faster SAS/SATA, PCIe 3, etc. etc. G7s are also no longer supported by any operating system, so it makes it very difficult to run the latest OS and software. And if you are paying for hardware support, you are probably paying quite a bit.

 

[Armageus]

It looks like the 4110 is about 30% more powerful than an X5675, but it will be doing this while consuming a LOT less electricity.

How are you judging performance? - paper figures don't tell the whole story, it will largely be software dependent. Good call on the power usage front though.

You also get DDR4, faster SAS/SATA, PCIe 3, etc. etc.

True, but again depends if your software is limited by memory bandwidth, or you actually need faster SAS/SATA e.g. for faster SSDs.

G7s are also no longer supported by any operating system, so it makes it very difficult to run the latest OS and software.

The G7's I just installed where I work say otherwise... no issue running 2016 Server on them (although it may not be supported by HP - as in no easy install etc). Linux distributions also seem to work fine (as you would generally expect)

And if you are paying for hardware support, you are probably paying quite a bit.

I'm not paying for any hardware support - when spare refurbed G7's are ~£100 then it's as convenient to have several sat on the shelf.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
This is a really useful way of judging relative CPU performance. Search for the CPUs you are interested in, and make note of the PassMark score. A score of 10,000 is objectively twice as powerful as a score of 5,000.

As far as support is concerned, if you don't care about that, then having supported hardware is meaningless. It means you can't call Microsoft or HPE with any issues. For example, to run ESXi 6.5 on a G7 you have to inject older drivers, and every time you update ESXi those older drivers will get overwritten so you have to remember to roll them back before you reboot. This works fine in a home lab, but is unacceptable (to me) in a work environment. Older versions of ESXi (that *do* support the G7) have security vulnerabilities so now your environment is open to exploits. Anything is possible, but all things being equal, I much prefer an environment that is easy to maintain and easy to keep up to date. I have no doubt that you were able to get Windows 2016 running on a G7, but I suspect you had to use Windows 2008 R2 drivers to do it? Will HPE or Microsoft support you if you run into problems? And at that point, what are your options?

As for performance, horse-drawn buggies still manage to get people from A to B, but there's a reason the modern motor vehicle became quite popular.

Bottom line, if there's nothing wrong with the app right now, and you're happy with the completely unsupported nature of the environment, why are you even considering upgrading to new hardware? For me, my time is valuable, and so is the time of the end users. If you end up faffing around with a G7 where you could've gotten it sorted that much quicker on a Gen10, not to mention the improved performance and lower power consumption of a newer server, then how much is that lost time worth?

 

[opethdisciple]

Thank you all.

You are correct. It depends on work load and our procurement manager has been using Passmark to judge the cpu's. I guess the workload is mixed. Mostly running VM's but within those VM's the workload might be more suited to higher clock speed rather than multicores. But then the multicore is go for running multiple VM's.

We are also looking at a Gold Intel CPU 6 cores but higher clock speed. Might be better.

We are concerned about the recent Spectre and Meltdown bugs. It's a high security environment so we need to plug the holes.

BIOS updates are not available for our existing hardware hence the need to upgrade.

 

[Armageus]

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
This is a really useful way of judging relative CPU performance. Search for the CPUs you are interested in, and make note of the PassMark score. A score of 10,000 is objectively twice as powerful as a score of 5,000.

But again without knowing the software used, is doubling a passmark score really of benefit?
For what it's worth:
[Dual CPU] Intel Xeon X5675 @ 3.07GHz - 12711 Passmark - Single Thread Rating: 1386
[Dual CPU] Intel Xeon Silver 4110 @ 2.10GHz - 17738 Passmark - Single Thread Rating: 1700.

If the software is single threaded, then the performance improvement is more like 20%

whereas something like:
[Dual CPU] Intel Xeon Gold 6144 @ 3.50GHz - 28830 Passmark - Single Thread Rating: 2386

would improve both single and multi threaded workloads by a huge amount.

Without knowing the actual workload, it's pointless speculating as to what the best buy is.
If it's a Database server for example it may be processors aren't the issue at all but memory or faster storage are the limiting factor.
If it's a File Server, then essentially the cheapest lowest power CPUs are probably the best option
etc...

As for performance, horse-drawn buggies still manage to get people from A to B, but there's a reason the modern motor vehicle became quite popular

There is, but equally justifying a Bugatti Veyron to your boss when a Ford Focus or Range Rover were more appropriate for the task in hand, may be a hard sell.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Haha there’s always a first time for everything. I wouldn’t equate a Xeon Silver to a Veyron.

I’m trying to give general advice (in response to a general question) and you’re nitpicking every little thing I say.

 

[Caged]

Of course going from Gen7 servers to current models is a worthwhile upgrade. You must either be running the existing stuff without support or paying a fortune to keep it renewed.

 

[Armageus]

Haha there’s always a first time for everything. I wouldn’t equate a Xeon Silver to a Veyron.

Neither would I in hindsight - the point was more that it's possibly the wrong tool for the job (if the job needs a jack of all trades like a Focus, or is designed for a different specific job e.g. going offroad rather than fast in a Range Rover)

I’m trying to give general advice (in response to a general question) and you’re nitpicking every little thing I say.

No I'm not, just trying to get across the point that spending money on newer servers may not necessarily give the performance increase you expect (E.g. just because it's newer, or because it performs X amount better in a specific benchmark) depending on workload - that's why Servers have a huge range of configurations (44 Different CPU options on the DL360 Gen10!).

As a general answer to the OPs question, then yes it's a worthy upgrade on many levels (e.g. reliability, support, energy efficiency), and in most use cases the processor is probably faster.

 

[Caged]

FWIW Spectre and Meltdown are going to be complete clownshows until the architectures are redone, so you're too early for hardware mitigations. Chances are the microcode doesn't exist yet for the machines you're looking at, since everybody managed to totally screw up the first round of updates.