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billk
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Contributor

New small business environment esxi server buying advice

I am building out a lower cost first environment for my small business (6 employees) to have replicas of our customer environments in house to do development, prototyping, etc.

I have bought an older dell poweredge 1850 with two 3.0ghz xeon processors and 4 gb of memory to run openfiler on, connected to a dell powervault md1000 with eight 300GB 10k SAS disks.

I am torn between buying new and picking up some older hardware off ebay, like I did the other components. I was hoping to keep this below $6000 and have spent $3000 so far on the above. The options I am considering are:

1) ebay poweredge 1850 dual core xeons

2) ebay poweredge 1850 with single core xeons like what I am going to run openfiler on

3) buying new dell poweredge 1950 III with quad core intel L5420 chips

For kicks, I installed esxi on the 1850 with two 3.0ghz xeons and 4gb ram. It seems snappy and the utilization numbers did not seem very high with half of a customer environment up and running, but I wasn't sure how much more that would scale. The customer environments will be comprised of a mix of windows and linux vms, probably 4 or 5 vms per environment and simulating 2 or 3 customers, plus another set of vms for our own use, subversion, sharepoint, etc.

I am thinking that I need at least 2 esxi servers to support this (at least initially) and would like to keep the hosts somewhat close in specs to support things like vmotion, etc. in the future. I want enough to handle what i need now, plus give a little room for future growth. Is more processor cores better than more memory (i.e. should I pay up for 16 GB of RAM or 2 quad core processors and 8 gb of ram)? Are the dual core xeons enough to carry the requirements above? I think the poweredge 1850 max out at 24 gb or ram, while the 1950s go to 64.

Can anyone offer advice/insight on my 3 options above, keeping in mind I am willing to go a little more over budget if needed. I was planning on spending the $1000 for the esxi starter bundle too.

Thanks,

-Bill

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RParker
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1950 is preferable to 1850 (core vs hyperthread CPU).

For kicks, I installed esxi on the 1850 with two 3.0ghz xeons and 4gb ram. It seems snappy and the utilization numbers did not seem very high with half of a customer environment up and running, but I wasn't sure how much more that would scale.

Not very, you only have 2 processors. With a 4:1 ratio, you are looking at 8 VM's MAX, with only 4GB of RAM, probably no more than 4. I would get some 2950, with at least 16, if not 32GB of RAM. The main difference is disk IO, more spindles equals better performance.

A 1950 can probably go 4 x 2.5" SAS drives (depending on the configuration) so at LEAST get a 1950. That's the route you should be on.

The order is: Disk drives, THEN CPU, THEN memory. That's the order you should consider of priority for running VM's. IF your storage is not good, I don't care how much CPU / RAM you have your VM's are going to suffer.

But the 1950 gives you much better option for EMT 64 Extensions and CPU performance. 1850 / 2850 are also end of life.






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billk
Contributor
Contributor

Very good feedback.

Since I plan on serving the powervault md1000 with 8 300 GB 10,000 RPM SAS disks up to the esxi servers using openfiler, do I need to be as concerned about the local disk storage in the esxi servers? Will they be using the local disks for anything other than booting and logging? I was thinking of doing either 2 - 4 disk raid 5 arrays or one 8 disk raid 5 + hot spare (not sure if I can do that with this perc5e card, but think I can).

Given the above and your advice, sounds like you confirmed my thinking and to go with the 1950. So, I was looking at just using the 7200 rpm sata drives for local storage, the L5420 processor and 16 gb of ram. Just debating whether or not to get 2 cpus or just 1 for now and add later.

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s1xth
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

I agree with what RParker is saying. Keep it AT LEAST a 1950 with Dual Proc's and good hard drives. If you are doing connected storage you can get away with 2x 73GB 15ks, since your storage is on the MD1000. Now I am not sure about this, but I think the MD1000 can only handle 2 servers connectted to it correct? I am not to familiar with that unit, more familiar with the MD3000 which supports HBA SAS and 4 connected PE servers.

You also have the option of getting a PE 2950 and 6x 15k 300's or 9 10k 2.5 300's drives and doing local storage, if thats enough storage for you. If the company isnt looking at dropping money for vmotion, ha, drs for a while ($$$ Smiley Happy ) than you might want to look at that route. You can always use the MD1000 connectted to this and do snapshots via a script and drop them to the connected storage. There are a lot of options.

http://www.virtualizationimpact.com http://www.handsonvirtualization.com Twitter: @jfranconi
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billk
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Unless I am missing something, I am not going to connect these new PE 1950s to the MD1000 directly. Instead, I am going to install openfiler on a PE1850 box, which will be connected to the M1000 and use iSCSI to serve the volumes to the PE1950s. Will that not work?

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JohnADCO
Expert
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Dual quad core processors is where you want to be. On the RAM? As much as you can possibly swing.

I'd caution the psuedo iSCSI san, make sure sure you can get reliable feedback on the config as far as performance goes.

On a tight budget? I generally tell people to hang out on the Dell outlet for an actual MD3000i.... I find I can get them there for just about what the raw storage costs.

(tip? - try to find the cheapest fully populated MD3000i and then take the drive upgrade option to 1GB drives, for maximum bang for buck out of it)

(tip2? - Wait for one that comes with snapshot and VD Copy as well)

(tip3 - Dual controllers as well)

$8K-ish for dual ctrl

single ctrl MD3000i's go for much cheaper if you can't swing the dual ctrl cost.

With the above config? You go from having to finagle a good performing system to not having to worry about it at all. That is worth the price of admission to most customers.

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billk
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I wish I had the budget for the md3000, but don't. I already have the md1000 so that is what I am going to go with and enjoy tweaking/tinkering around. I don't see any reason why I can't get openfiler to perform the same.

Given that I will be using storage on the md1000 only, is it worth spending another $500 on my pe 1950 servers for the 73 gb 15k local disks instead of 2 sata 160 gb disks? Or, do I need 2 local disks in raid 1 setup at all, or just get by with a single 73 gb disk which would be $200 more. For $200 I could get 8 gb of ram or 16 gb of ram for the $500 I would put into the disks.

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JohnADCO
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OK, sort of hard to gauge budgets involved.

On the drives, you mean more physical drives and faster drives as well? Should be worth it in my experiences.

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billk
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I mean the local disks in the poweredge 1950 server, that will have esxi installed and nothing else. Do those need to be 15k disks or anything special? I would guess not, but wanted to confirm.

I have eight 300gb 15k disks in the md1000 which I am either going to put in raid 5 with seven disks and a hot spare, or buy another disk and do raid 50 with 8 disks and a hot spare. I will be putting all of the virtual machines on the md1000.

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JohnADCO
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We run lots of VM's on regular realatively slow 500g SATA drive arrays and they run just fine. iSCSI for me though. Of course more drives and/or faster drives always means better performance. Our 15K SAS arrays run notice-ably faster have no doubt.

billk
Contributor
Contributor

Good to know. So, I can just get the 7200 rpm 160 GB sata drives as the local storage on my esxi server and spend the extra money on ram, since the vms will be on the 15k disk drive array. Do I need tobother getting 2 local disks and put them in raid 1, or should i save the $100?

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JohnADCO
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Even if it was just a test environment, I'd probably want at least that redandancy. Smiley Happy

It will be interesting to see how your environment performs.

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