Dell 6950 Servers

[Watch22]

We are currently looking at buying 4 Dell 6950 with four AMD 8222SE (3GHZ) processors/64G servers for a VMware 3.x environment. Is there anyone out their running these servers in VMware 3.x? Were normally buy IBM but the price is half for the same servers from Dell. What I'm most interested in the performance of the Dell’s compared to the IBM 3755’s in a quad processor setup.

Thanks

[mreferre]

The 3755 has two peculiarities:

\- it supports a CPU pass-through technology that allows the usage of 3 CPU's with a single "NUMA hop charge" (with 4 cpu's in some circumstances the system will be taxed with 2 NUMA hops depending on where your cpu are accessing memory). This is useful for very memory intensive applications.

\- it supports all CPU's being populated with 8 memory DIMMS YET continuing to work at 667MHz. Other planars (at 8 memory DIMMS) need to scale down to 533MHz. This is helpful to run configurations with smaller size DIMMS (populating all 8 slots with cheaper dimms) without performance penalties.

I also suggest you get in touch with your IBM sales rep because while I can understand a small price difference half the price looks to me a bit big of a difference. Are you sure it's an apple to apple comparison ? Same CPU's, same amount of memory etc etc =

Massimo.

Massimo.

[juchestyle]

Watch22,

While I haven't yet used the 69XX series from Dell, I have used many of the prior versions 68XX and before in the quads. I would choose a Dell over ibm anytime. I have worked for IBM and I have used their products; and I can't stand the company. There are a few guys on the fourums from IBM that are great guys. But I would never voluntarily use IBM equipment. I find the company arrogant, they recently tried to tell us some of their products did things they don't do according to their product documentation. And when pressed about it, they said, "Oh, those features will be available in the next release."

Dell is a much better company, in my humble opinion.

Respectfully,

Matthew

[petedr]

We have success with Dell servers in the past for ESX hosts. We also have been using HPs for production hosts.

[msmenne17]

Are the configurations identical (proc cores, proc speed, memory speed, dimm size)?

I've used Dell and HP in the past for virtualization Both work equally as well, though I give the edge to HP for service and management. I work for a company with 2700+ Windows servers globally on Dell hardware. Dell doesn't quite understand our size. They love to give us the runaround.

If you can get IBM down on the pricing, I'd stick with them since you're normally and IBM shop.

[mreferre]

Just to set the records with I didn't want to push any IBM gear over others. I don't like to do that... at least not on this forum.

Matthew, as per your experience with IBM ..... while I have found arrogant people on my way ...... I have also found the most brilliant people. I guess that any company (specifically of this size) has a mix of arrogant, below-average, good-enough and brilliant people ..... IBM is no exception (I think).

Massimo.

[juchestyle]

Hey Massimo,

If IBM had more people like you, I think the company would be unstoppable. Somehow I have just run into all the bad ones.

The reason I always sign off with Respectfully, is because I think it is extremely important to always maintain a sense of being humble and respectful.

Let me correct what I said earlier. The only way I would voluntarily buy ibm equipment is if Massimo sold it to me.

After that, I like Dell equipment and have had good luck with them. I think that because Dell is a smaller company, compared to HP and ibm, I think they often work very hard to earn and keep your business. Very similar to college football, those guys play with their hearts. IBM is so big and vast that my perception of their mentality is: "Hey we are so big you should be honored to buy from us, we shouldn't have to explain ourselves or earn your business." That is the difference that I see. I have just started working with HP, so I am feeling them out.

Respectfully,

Matthew

[mreferre]

>The only way I would voluntarily buy ibm equipment is if Massimo sold it

to me.

Anyway.... I see what you are saying .....

Massimo.

[canadait]

Hi,

We have 5 6950 with the AMD 2.8 GHZ & 32 GB Ram and they scream. We are a Delll shop so I can't compare to the IBMs but I am very happy with my investment.

[balacs]

Here is a white paper on VMmark results on 6950s (http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/solutions/poweredge_vmmark_final.pdf). It does not have comparison with IBM systems though.

www.dell.com/vmware has other white papers and support documents that you might find useful.

Bala,

Dell Inc.

[IB_IT]

Hey Bala,

thanks for the pdf...do you know when this was published?

[balacs]

Jan 2007 (as indicated in the fine print at the very bottom )

Note that, these results are with the initial release of VMmark. Once VMmark has a final release, these results might be updated. If other hardware vendors also publish their results on this benchmarks, you will have a standard way different platforms.

Bala,

Dell Inc.

[IB_IT]

yeah, I noticed that after I wrote my previous post...

Thanks!!

[contra422]

I use mainly Dell equipment and have used the 6950's for VMware with 32GB mem (I'm told the cost for 64GB mem is almost the cost for another 32GB 6950).

Ideal in my opinion for vmware, plenty of support and lots of support/whitepapers/technical doc's from both companies.

[ngrundy]

We've got three of these boxes now, two running vmware the third is a compute server and so far we have been most impressed with the machines. We're a dell house so i can't give you a comparison against IBM but for bang for buck neither HP, Sun or IBM can come near Dell.

[dadalowg]

wow. Great to hear that the Dell 6950/VI3 combination is doing good. My setup is going to be 4 Dell 6950 nodes immediately and 2 more to to be added next year. 4 x 3.0 GHz dual core / 64GB Ram, taking on a potential load of 120 virtual machines.

We are a Dell shop as well and our existing 2.5.x farm is thriving on Dell. I have previously used HP on some assignments and they were super with VmWare.

Message was edited by:

dadalowg

[mreferre]

>My setup is going to be 4 Dell 6950 nodes immediately and 2 more to to

>be added next year

For the sake of your planning next year you will see new Intel CPU's on this class of boxes (4-way). It is very licckely that what you buy today (Netburst architecture) won't be VMotion compatible with what you can buy next year (Core architecture). Unless of course you buy "old" kits.

Of course this is not specific to dell ..... it's the x86 banana market.

Massimo.