Views on the Dell R515 range?

G

gabi_cavaller

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Apr 10, 2012
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Hi,

Starting a new project and wondering what your thoughts where on the proposed hardware.

Looking to virtualise a maximum of 15 servers, including 1 x Exchange 2007, low loads. Low iOPS, currently all servers on 32 bit Server 2008 OS's. Looking at running XenApp in future for 20 users.

Purchasing 2 x hosts, cannot see more than 20 hosts in the next 24 months, will be using local storage and then backing up to a NAS.

Currently a total of 1.1TB used

Hardware spec;

Dell PowerEdge R515

  • Dual Opteron 4234 6C 3.1GHz
  • 64GB DDR3 1066MHz 8x8GB using 1600 MHz DIMMS
  • 8 X HD Chassis
  • Dual PSU
  • PERC H700, 512MB Cache, Raid 10
  • 6 x 450GB SAS 15k hot plug
  • 2 x onboard nics + 4 additional.
  • 3 year pro support, 4 hr mission citrical

Just wondering what your thoughts are on the hardware and things such as the CPU/Raid Controller.

Thanks very much, really appreciated.

G.
 
With no shared storage you won't get VMotion / XenMotion. The hardware looks good.
 
Looks good. Other than the obvious AMD over Intel question. It doesn't necessarily matter all that much in this scenario, but it does beg the question.
 
Intel VS AMD, doesn't bother me really. AMD you get better consolidation at a cheaper price, but we aren't going to go into that debate now :) Most of the other rigs I have worked on are AMD/Intel, not had issues with either.

Shared storage, this is great in larger businesses that have money, but on the smaller end of the scale, it's too much money.

If you are going to have resiliency at the front end, buy having multiple nodes, you need that in the back end, which costs unsubstantial money.

We will have a Synology RS3412RPxs to back up to, which will replicate off site using Veeam, or might build a NAS using Nexenta & a Dell 2950 loaded with SATA drives.

:)

But please feel free to educate me, this is how we learn
 
So why two nodes if using local storage? 15 VMs is not much...

As for Intel vs AMD, the ESXi scheduler loves single threaded performance. Intel is way ahead there.

btw, if you build a Nexenta NAS it works very well for VMware storage.
 
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I have a R415 with 24 gigs ram in it and love it,

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I don't even use 1/32'nd of the cpu power tho, way over kill for me.. Maybe i should sell it and get something lighter..
 
shiznit said:
So why two nodes if using local storage? 15 VMs is not much...

As for Intel vs AMD, the ESXi scheduler loves single threaded performance. Intel is way ahead there.

btw, if you build a Nexenta NAS it works very well for VMware storage.
Click to expand...

Because if Node A breaks, I can recover my "important" VM's to Node B from a backup. If I had no extra nodes, I could not do that (well I could, a desktop wth vmware workstation.

As for the single threaded performance, I need to carry out more research on this, thank you.

Nexenta is nice, I will have two choices.

1) use a Dell 2950, loaded with good quality drives running Nexenta
2) A rackable synology such as the RS2212+

Need to carry out some further testing.
 
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