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[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- May 9, 2008
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- 1,318
In total I have five servers seen as opportunities to eliminate. All but one of them run fine on single core 2.8ghz Xeons and 2gb of memory. They are all about 4.5 years old. The problematic server needs more memory. Due to SQL 2000 standard on Server 2003 standard I can't go beyond 2gb.
Maxing out the memory to 8gb and reinstalling w/ Server 08 and SQL 08 would work but that is putting $6200 in licensing costs on a single core processor. Seems like a terrible idea.
Six light use databases running fine using 4gb of memory, very little IO load on two 3x15k RAID 5 sets. 20gb total database size.
One heavier use database that is choking on 2gb of memory and demanding 8000 read IO per second from a 3x15k RAID 5 set. It typically pushes 350 writes/sec that we never wait on. 34gb database size
Total hardware from five physical servers
Six single core Xeons @ 2.8ghz
10GB used memory 16GB probably needed
Nine 36gb 15k rpm SCSI drives, three 80gb Sata drives
Gigabit NICs in each machine are only pushed over 5% during backups, which I have a 4 hour window every night.
With the hardware around now I see it as a no brainer to be able to shut off 5 machines, each with redundant PSUs, wasted clock cycles, wasted space, and software and hardware that is obsolete. But should you do it if they are running fine?
Talked the CFO into a $10k budget for the problem. I can't figure out a way to make this work unless I do it all with a single processor:
$2381 Server 2008 datacenter processor license
$5400 SQL 2008 standard 1 processor license
$1010 Data protection server + 1 enterprise ML "filthy greedy bastards here"
Figure I'll need atleast seven Windows virtual machines to cover my current needs and add another two more in the future. This leaves me with a whopping $1200 for hardware, not going to happen but I can sneak a little more into parts and repair orders
. Would have to be internal storage or utilize Dell 2724 switches and one of my old servers for a makeshift iSCSI SAN.
It's starting to seem like there are too many shortcuts, too little redundancy, little room for expansion, and not enough knowledge on my part of these setups. Should I just walk away from this and wait for the budget, maybe throw a couple more drives at my troubled server and see what happens?
Edit:
As a sort of followup. Does assigning a single virtual CPU to a virtual machine allow only one thread at a time to be processed or how does that work out?
Say you have a quad core processor and 8 virtual machines. Each has a single virtual CPU assigned. Two of them want 100% of their CPU and the other 6 are idle. In the host how much CPU is being used?
The virtual machine running SQL 2008 standard with 1 processor license would only be legal if a single virtual CPU is assigned? Is this hard coded or by contract? So much testing to do
Maxing out the memory to 8gb and reinstalling w/ Server 08 and SQL 08 would work but that is putting $6200 in licensing costs on a single core processor. Seems like a terrible idea.
Six light use databases running fine using 4gb of memory, very little IO load on two 3x15k RAID 5 sets. 20gb total database size.
One heavier use database that is choking on 2gb of memory and demanding 8000 read IO per second from a 3x15k RAID 5 set. It typically pushes 350 writes/sec that we never wait on. 34gb database size
Total hardware from five physical servers
Six single core Xeons @ 2.8ghz
10GB used memory 16GB probably needed
Nine 36gb 15k rpm SCSI drives, three 80gb Sata drives
Gigabit NICs in each machine are only pushed over 5% during backups, which I have a 4 hour window every night.
With the hardware around now I see it as a no brainer to be able to shut off 5 machines, each with redundant PSUs, wasted clock cycles, wasted space, and software and hardware that is obsolete. But should you do it if they are running fine?
Talked the CFO into a $10k budget for the problem. I can't figure out a way to make this work unless I do it all with a single processor:
$2381 Server 2008 datacenter processor license
$5400 SQL 2008 standard 1 processor license
$1010 Data protection server + 1 enterprise ML "filthy greedy bastards here"
Figure I'll need atleast seven Windows virtual machines to cover my current needs and add another two more in the future. This leaves me with a whopping $1200 for hardware, not going to happen but I can sneak a little more into parts and repair orders
. Would have to be internal storage or utilize Dell 2724 switches and one of my old servers for a makeshift iSCSI SAN.It's starting to seem like there are too many shortcuts, too little redundancy, little room for expansion, and not enough knowledge on my part of these setups. Should I just walk away from this and wait for the budget, maybe throw a couple more drives at my troubled server and see what happens?
Edit:
As a sort of followup. Does assigning a single virtual CPU to a virtual machine allow only one thread at a time to be processed or how does that work out?
Say you have a quad core processor and 8 virtual machines. Each has a single virtual CPU assigned. Two of them want 100% of their CPU and the other 6 are idle. In the host how much CPU is being used?
The virtual machine running SQL 2008 standard with 1 processor license would only be legal if a single virtual CPU is assigned? Is this hard coded or by contract? So much testing to do
Last edited: