Blade Servers vs 1U server noise

M

mhamzahkhan

n00b
Joined
Feb 19, 2010
Messages
23
Hello Guys,

I play a lot with virtualization in my home lab, and have noticed that I am always running out of RAM in my hosts.

To solve this, I initially looked at just buying more RAM for my servers as generally the CPUs are generally fine for my purposes (except if I want to run Windows!), but then I thought it might be worth looking at replacing the servers instead.

Currently, I have 10x 1U Transport GT24 (B2891) boxes. These boxes each have two AMD Opteron CPUs which run super hot, and loud, and don't have hardware virtualization support. The amount of RAM in each box varies between 4GB-8GB.

I also have two Dell PowerEdge 1950s. I know some people hate these boxes, but they are quite perfect for me! Their fans don't scream, and the CPUs have VT and I have 16GB in each box.

As I am currently running out of rack space, I was interested in replacing the Opteron boxes with a Dell PowerEdge 1855 Blade Chassis with some Dell PowerEdge 1955 Blades, but I was wondering how noisy these actually are compared to 1U servers.

We have some blades at work, but our server room is so loud due as it is, I can't really tell how loud a blade chassis/server is.

It looks like the blade chassis has some large fans on the back for cooling, and each individual blade doesn't have any fans? Or is this wrong? I can't seem to find anywhere that suggests that there are fans inside the blade.

This would, in theory, mean that the blades should be quieter than 10 x1U servers with mini fans that scream, right?

Right now, this all lives in the basement, so the noise isn't a HUGE concern, but right now a good amount of the noise from the 1U Tyans gets upstairs due to their high-pitch whining sound.
 
They are going to be loud. Why not ditch all of the old servers for one or two newer generation servers that are much quieter and easier to work with?
 
How much virtualization are you talking? Their are some newer 1U/2Us utilizing ivy bridge processors that are going to use a lot less power and unless pressed hard should be a lot less noise.
 
The 1855 chassis are very loud. We have a few and they're complete crap. If I recall they also require 208v unlike the M1000e that can be run at 110v. M1000e chassis are pretty awesome, but Dells first try at blades were junk.

We have 4 M1000e chassis with the CMCs stacked in one cabinet. I've failed over the first chassis CMC which caused all four to fail over. Insanely loud, had to leave the data center until the fans settled down.
 
Blade chassis are always loud and such tons of power. Just demolished an old first-gen HP one which ran on 48V and sounded like a banshee.

Unless you have a separate garage I would advise against it.

Funny thing about the place we took that out of was they do commercial laundry so if they turned off all their computers they wouldn't even notice on their bill.
 
I'd look at a few 2U servers. Probably quieter than a blade. If you can spare the room, 4U custom built is even better as you can pick the fans/controller and go for the best balance between good cooling and noise. Way cheaper than blade too. Though the thought of having a blade server at home does sound pretty awesome.
 
I have two Dell Poweredge R210 IIs with E1230 processors and 16GB of ram each. They run quiet and cool at home. I don't ever really tax the processors for lab work.
 
Have you considered a whitebox or three.

You could easily build some i5/i7, 32GB DDR3 boxes and then run virtual ESXi hosts and storage as guest VM's on top of a bare metal ESXi install. All you need to do is echo vhv.allow = "TRUE" into the \etc\vmware\config file on the bare metal install to run virtual ESXi hosts with 64-bit "guests".

This would be a low power solution with minimal cooling requirements and fan noise, etc.
 
I'd say for go for the simple route ....

a 16 Core AMD Opteron (Interlagos) with 128GB of RAM or more. Or even a 2p Interlagos 16 core amd (32 cores) with full AMD-V support. You should be able to run about 75-100 VM's all day long if you got the RAM on the board. WIll use SOOOOOO MUCH less power and be in one 2-3u sized server chassis. Or you can even get away with a 2u chassis if you use say ... an 8GB/s FiberChannel MSA as a storage or even a regular NAS with a 10gb/e connection.
 
l3thal6 said:
Have you considered a whitebox or three.

You could easily build some i5/i7, 32GB DDR3 boxes and then run virtual ESXi hosts and storage as guest VM's on top of a bare metal ESXi install. All you need to do is echo vhv.allow = "TRUE" into the \etc\vmware\config file on the bare metal install to run virtual ESXi hosts with 64-bit "guests".

This would be a low power solution with minimal cooling requirements and fan noise, etc.
Click to expand...

Wait, does ESXi install on consumer hardware now? I've been wanting to look into a VM solution and I'd love to run ESXi but last I heard it only works on specific hardware, mostly enterprise class prebuilt servers.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Wait, does ESXi install on consumer hardware now? I've been wanting to look into a VM solution and I'd love to run ESXi but last I heard it only works on specific hardware, mostly enterprise class prebuilt servers.
Click to expand...

I have my main ESXi build on a consumer MSI board running an i7. I also have a remote site that has ESXi running on a dell desktop. Their hardware compatibly is more for cards, etc.. and there are always ways around that too.
 
I pretty much took my gaming desktop and turned it into an ESXi whitebox. The only thing that didn't work was the software raid controller on my motherboard or the NIC.

I bought an Intel PCI-E NIC and I have had no other problems for 5 months.

Specs:

ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z
Intel i5 2500K
32GB DDR3
2x WD RE4 500GB

ESXi 5.1 build 799733
 
CiscoInside said:
I have my main ESXi build on a consumer MSI board running an i7. I also have a remote site that has ESXi running on a dell desktop. Their hardware compatibly is more for cards, etc.. and there are always ways around that too.
Click to expand...

That is good to know. I will have to keep that into consideration when I build my next server. May go ESXi after all.
 
I setup some 1U Dell R620's and they are extremely quiet. I had all three running on my desk and you could hardly tell they were even on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top