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Hardware suggestions

L

ltickett

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 27, 2000
Messages
1,125
I'm looking at setting up some equipment at a colo and have a good idea of what i'd like for the most part;

Synology RS3614xs w/ Dual 10gbe NIC
4x WD Red 3TB (Raid 10)- For vm storage and local backups
2x Samsung EVO 1TB (Raid1)- For SQL database storage

Netgear XS708E-100NES 8Port 10Gbe Switch

Unknown 24Port 1Gbe Switch

But could use some pointers on the ESX hosts themselves. I'm currently using small Supermicro 1U chasis with X8SIL-F, Intel Xeon X3470 & 32GB RAM. They're dated but still performing remarkably well. Is there a more modern equivalent anyone would suggest?

I need out of band management (like iLO etc) and will be adding a 10gbe card.
 
What is the number of VMs and what type? Number of IOPS you are desiring? How many servers (hosts and VMs) ares you running now? Do you want rack mount or tower cases?
 
Looking for rackmount as it will be colocated in a datacenter.

I currently have 2 hosts and about 12 VMs (pfSense, vCenter Appliance, Centos WebServer, then a bunch of Windows Servers; AD, SQL etc) . At the moment I only host my own in-house systems, but am looking at providing hosting for my clients.

I'm not sure of a number IOPS wise, but the SQL server will be heavily used. All I know is that spinning disks aren't fast enough.

I'm also examining different licensing options, struggling most with XenApp.
 
Place holder. I will reply later with more detail. In short, you need some more metrics before we can properly guide you.
 
Let me know what you need and i'll see if I can provide it.

I think last time I looked the datastore may have been peaking at around 5000 IOPS, but this is with a single SQL instance. I'd ideally want to be able to handle 5+ instances with an easy path to handle more.
 
ltickett said:
Let me know what you need and i'll see if I can provide it.

I think last time I looked the datastore may have been peaking at around 5000 IOPS, but this is with a single SQL instance. I'd ideally want to be able to handle 5+ instances with an easy path to handle more.
Click to expand...

Do you know what the percentage (or raw values) of reads and writes that SQL is doing?
 
I would say it's very read heavy, say 90%

I will checkout the X9SRH-7TF. Should it fit in a 1U case?

I'm not too keen on going down the all in one route / virtualising the SAN. Care to expand on why you think that might be the preferred way forward?

Thanks!
 
Is there anywhere I can look at price/performance of the processors? There are so many to chose from!

I guess the more cores, the better as i'll be able to run more VMs / SQL instances on each host.
 
Hardware ordered- my bank manager is going to kill me!

SuperMicro 1U AS-1042G-LTF Quad Socket G34 Barebone
4x Opteron 6176 12-Core 2.3Ghz
96GB DDR3 1600 ECC
Intel X540T2 Dual-Port 10Gbe NIC
Roughly £2,000

SuperMicro 1U AS-1042G-LTF Quad Socket G34 Barebone
4x Opteron 6174 12-Core 2.2Ghz
96GB DDR3 1600 ECC
Intel X540T2 Dual-Port 10Gbe NIC
Roughly £2,000

Synology 2U RS3614XS
6x 3TB WD RED
2x 1TB Samsung EVO SSD
Intel X540T2 Dual-Port 10Gbe NIC
£3,500

1x Netgear XS708E 8-Port 10Gbe Switch
1x D-Link 1210-24-Port 1Gbe Switch
£750

Still undecided about the EdgeRouter and need to order some cables and make a decision regarding the colo provider.

Also need to think about the network design...

I'm picturing;
-a SAN VLAN / subnet with a single 10Gbe connection to the NAS and both ESX servers (if it's possible i will use one of the 1Gbe ports for failover)
-a Data VLAN / subnet with a single 10Gbe connection to the NAS and both ESX servers (if it's possible i will use one of the 1Gbe ports for failover)
-a Management VLAN / subnet with a single 1Gbe connection to each ESX server
-a IPMI VLAN / subnet with a single 1Gbe connection to each ESX server

Sounds sensible? I may post in networking forum...
 
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