Is anyone able to help? I've been looking at the R805 server, which on Dell's website they indicate as the best choice for virtualization.
However, it only holds 2 drives...and we obviously want our system partition as RAID 1, so thats 2 drives used up straight away....before we even look at putting virtual machines on there.
I believe the R805 is designed for a SAN environment, with much of the data not stored on the server. If that's not what you have (or you're going to deploy), maybe you need to look at something different.
Would a 2950 III do the job? You can have up to 8 cores across two chips, and the new 5400 series Xeons are a great combination of processing power and low power consumption. There's six drive bays if you go for a 3.5 inch drive machine, or 8 if you go for 2.5 inch (which is a great choice for database servers where the IOPS matters). If that's not enough bays, the 2900 III is pretty much the same machine in a different form factor.
Certainly the 2950 III is used for the stand-alone version of VMware ESX.
There are four socket machines available (look at the R900, I believe) - but in smaller deployments where density isn't so important, two socket machines like the 2950 III may be the more conservative choice.
It depends on the nature of VMs you are planning to install and your infrastructure requirements. Here is very general recommendation.
- If your VMs reside in SAN, iSCSI (MD3000i is good entry level iSCSI SAN) or direct attached storage (MD1000/MD1120/MD3000) the R805 is a good option. It has a good "memory per core".
- If you want only local storage 2950 III and 2970 is a very good option.
- If you have no racks or dont want to rack your servers and have no space constrains, take a look at 2900 III. They have tons of internal storage with lot of PCI slots
- If CPU requirements for the VMs are high or the VMs run heavy workload, then you can look at 4 socket boxes: R900 and R905. I think they have the highest "VMMark" ratings. It is a VMware benchmark. http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html
You might also want to look at ESXi (in addition to ESX). It provides a cheaper option with limited features. You can order these servers with ESX/ESXi. http://www.dell.com/vmwarenow
Dell also has reference architectures: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/solutions/virtualization_ref_architecture_v1_1.pdf
Please mark this question as useful, if it helps you.
colllegeguy
8 Posts
0
July 15th, 2008 07:00
Is anyone able to help? I've been looking at the R805 server, which on Dell's website they indicate as the best choice for virtualization.
However, it only holds 2 drives...and we obviously want our system partition as RAID 1, so thats 2 drives used up straight away....before we even look at putting virtual machines on there.
Am I being thick?
david.j.wood
145 Posts
0
July 16th, 2008 09:00
I believe the R805 is designed for a SAN environment, with much of the data not stored on the server. If that's not what you have (or you're going to deploy), maybe you need to look at something different.
Would a 2950 III do the job? You can have up to 8 cores across two chips, and the new 5400 series Xeons are a great combination of processing power and low power consumption. There's six drive bays if you go for a 3.5 inch drive machine, or 8 if you go for 2.5 inch (which is a great choice for database servers where the IOPS matters). If that's not enough bays, the 2900 III is pretty much the same machine in a different form factor.
Certainly the 2950 III is used for the stand-alone version of VMware ESX.
There are four socket machines available (look at the R900, I believe) - but in smaller deployments where density isn't so important, two socket machines like the 2950 III may be the more conservative choice.
I'd browse the site, then give Sales a call.
Bala Chandrasek
57 Posts
0
July 16th, 2008 17:00
It depends on the nature of VMs you are planning to install and your infrastructure requirements. Here is very general recommendation.
- If your VMs reside in SAN, iSCSI (MD3000i is good entry level iSCSI SAN) or direct attached storage (MD1000/MD1120/MD3000) the R805 is a good option. It has a good "memory per core".
- If you want only local storage 2950 III and 2970 is a very good option.
- If you have no racks or dont want to rack your servers and have no space constrains, take a look at 2900 III. They have tons of internal storage with lot of PCI slots
- If CPU requirements for the VMs are high or the VMs run heavy workload, then you can look at 4 socket boxes: R900 and R905. I think they have the highest "VMMark" ratings. It is a VMware benchmark. http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html
You might also want to look at ESXi (in addition to ESX). It provides a cheaper option with limited features. You can order these servers with ESX/ESXi. http://www.dell.com/vmwarenow
Dell also has reference architectures: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/solutions/virtualization_ref_architecture_v1_1.pdf
Please mark this question as useful, if it helps you.
Bala.