Thoughts on EPYC or Threadripper as a SMB VM Host

[AGTDenton]

Hello Peoples

Within the next 6 months (depending on what on earth happens with lockdown) I will be looking to build a workstation/server to run some Virtual Machines for a small business.

The VMs will be used to run MS SQL Server heavy queries & application development in Delphi & C so they're going to need a little bit of grunt to them. They're looking at starting with 2 VMs running at all times for heavy tasks then a further 10 or so for very basic desktop tasks that won't be on at all times, I may be able to re-use older hardware for those, they're of less interest.
Thankfully they're coming from PC's where the max RAM was 16GB, but they're looking for something more scalable.

They'll be using Windows Server Host & Windows Desktop/LTSC Guest operating systems.

The initial thought is to use Hyper-V primarily for it's simplicity and low management overheads. However, if Hyper-V is not so great with utilising hardware then we'd consider alternatives that better utilise hardware such as GPU & threads.
I've not done a Hyper-V build since Windows 2008 so a lot will have happened during that time, but I found it very reliable for previous projects.

There's a huge choice of hardware these days now AMD are back in action and my first spec is based on the current Threadripper CPU, however, not feeling that it's scalable enough.
I've not worked with AMD's server stuff since Opterons 10 years ago, so I'd love some EPYC recommendations if you think it's possible on budget. Especially if dual CPU is an option, but budget constraints may affect that.

I'll be looking to house this in a 4U Tower/Pedestal based server..
So my initial spec is to start light but allow for some future expansion.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 32c/64t
128GB RAM - Don't need ECC, data on here is not considered critical and would rather have the speed
AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 8GB - not sure if this will achieve much over a 1030 when they're not doing graphical tasks
Motherboard, something along the lines of a Gigabyte AMD Threadripper TRX40 AORUS MASTER

Budget up to £4K

Cheers

 

[AGTDenton]

For the vast majority of VM workloads the EPYC processors are fine - we run our enterprise vSphere cluster with over 600 VMs on 6 hosts on the 32-core 2ghz ones each backed by 1TB RAM, though we have a seperate 3 host cluster for high demand or time-critical processing which has higher speed CPUS

Speccing storage properly is critical also - storage contention can become a big issue especially if they have expansion plans.

Thanks, only thing I'm finding with EPYC is once you go to the CPUs that support dual socket its quite a jump in price and at the performance we're looking for takes 3/4 of the budget.
The single EPYC are ok priced, but can't see any benefit over the Threadripper cousins.

The storage will be a mix of NVME (Threadripper), 2.5 SSD's & HDD's, we'll be going for a dedicated RAID card and will be aimed at performance gains over data redundancy as the data on this workstation will be non critical, though it will need some redundancy to minimise any workflow downtime, there will be hot swap aswell.

As much as I'd like to get them on EPYC, they really need to double their budget, and I think I can get a reasonable workhorse for them with Threadripper initially.
Being a small business, the reality is they're going to have to get through the other side of this economy black hole before thinking EPYC/XEON level.

 

[AGTDenton]

Have you though about used enterprise kit?

You could likely get a couple of decently spec'ed HP or Dell Xeon based Tower servers for that money. RAM is dirt cheap, RAID will be included, and you'd get some redundancy features like hot swap PSUs and manageability features such as iDRAC/iLO as standard.

Might not be such a bad idea actually given the times.