Help selecting CPU

[Kenny782]

I'm picking up a Dell R710 with VMWare ESX essentials.

I'm just looking for suggestions on CPU and RAM, I've detailed the hosts below.

Hre are the specs dell is suggesting:

Dual Intel Xeon E5620

24GB RAM

It will be running 3 hosts all of which are hot spares for physical servers at other sites.

Host 1

• Win 2008 Srv Std
  
  • Domain Controller
    
  • File Server
    
  • Replicate files from remote server via DFS
    
  • Perform daily tape backup of all 3 hosts
    
• Exchange 2010 Std
  
  • Replicate mailboxes for 10 users from remote site
    

Host 2

• Win 2008 Srv Std
  
• SQL 2008 Std
  
  • Mirror role in 2 SQL 2008 Mirror Sets
    
• Terminal Services
  
  • Support 15-30 users in the event of a remote server failure
    
  • Users will run lightweight application that will utilize local SQL Instance
    

Host 2 (2 possibilities)

Scenario 1

• Win 2008 Srv Std
  
  • Some form of media server for 3 local computers
    

Scenario 2

• Same as Host 2 but will split duty
  

Thanks.

[AndreTheGiant]

You have a small environment, so a dual E5620 CPU could be fine.

IMHO I usually prefer the X5650 to have 6 cores and 1333MHz mem speed, but it's more expensive.

Andre

[bulletprooffool]

I agree with Andre here - more cores is generally worth the money (assuming your VMware license covers the additional cores)

You do not have a very large environment, so should be fine with the specification that you have suggested, but it is always worth overspecifying your VM environment, as in likelyhood it will need to expand as time goes by.

[idle-jam]

if it's hot spore i would just buy the cheapest possible hardware ..

[indyodie]

If you have the budget, I would try to mirror the live environment as closely as possible.  Nothing worse than having a failure and then finding out there aren't enough resources on the failover device.