Servers and things

Hans Manhave · November 04, 2010, 10:05:39 PM

There are so many processors. How does the Intel Celeron G1101 2.26GHz, 2M Cache sound as a server unit to replace a dual 3.06GHz Xeon? The Xeon being a quad processor in itself. I don't know enough about Celerons except that I didn't know they were server class processors (i.e. Dell T310).

This would be for a Windows Server 2008 and have MS SQL 2005 running on it also. 25 users.

Secondly, how would RAID5 SATA 7200 rpm drives compare to RAID5 SCSI 15000 rpm drives?

Anybody know of the PERC S100 controller and how it compares to the PERC4/Di of old?

Thoughts please.

Bloody Jack Kidd · November 05, 2010, 07:08:54 AM

Celeron is not server class... I suspect the T310 is very entry level and more of a glorified desktop. You are right though - there are almost too many processor choices these days. Stick with Xeons or AMD equivalent for servers.

Although AMD has lagged behind Intel for a number of seasons, since the introduction of the Core technology, they are still a player and their 32nm SOI soon-to-be released chip is going to put them back in the fight big time.

Hans Manhave · November 05, 2010, 03:43:54 PM

Just got a quote for a souped up T410......$16 less than a basic T610. For similar reasons I drive a 1 ton vehicle and not a souped up 1/2 ton vehicle.

Bloody Jack Kidd · November 05, 2010, 03:46:49 PM

still hard at it I see...

Bob · November 05, 2010, 03:51:00 PM

I prefer a beefed up T610! Oh wait I have that!

Anyone remember Tool Time, Tim Allen! I've always been if little is good, more is better! Argh Argh Argh..

Come on Hans get the T610 and Xeons! Why settle for one get two quad Xeons. 16 gigs of memory too.

Jeff Zylstra · November 05, 2010, 04:25:30 PM

Very happy with my Dell R710 server. I don't remember which processor that it has, other than it being a quad core Xeon which seemed to be at the price/performance sweet spot at the time. I did put in RAID 5 with a hot spare too. Very nice machine, and MUCH, MUCH quieter than my old server(s).

Billy Welsh · November 05, 2010, 05:32:12 PM

I am now feeling unmanly. I don't even know what model we have. And I have to hit the door today so I can't even go look

Bloody Jack Kidd · November 05, 2010, 09:36:25 PM

remember for optimized memory these days, with the Xeons that support it - you need 3 identical channels - so 6GB, 12GB, 24GB are the magic numbers - multiples of three.

Hans Manhave · November 06, 2010, 05:04:21 PM

Thank you. That is another piece I can use. I had 24 figured, but mostly because it was there and for virtualization that appeared attractive.

Quote from: Rick Chisholm on November 05, 2010, 09:36:25 PM
remember for optimized memory these days, with the Xeons that support it - you need 3 identical channels - so 6GB, 12GB, 24GB are the magic numbers - multiples of three.

Jeff Golas · November 08, 2010, 10:04:26 AM

I'll second the R710! Nice server and running 5 production servers in ESXi right now :-)

Hans Manhave · November 15, 2010, 07:29:43 PM

A T710 it has become. Now the wait.

Bloody Jack Kidd · November 15, 2010, 07:37:57 PM

congrats!

Bob · November 16, 2010, 11:57:44 AM

Yes congrats Hans nice piece of hardware!

Hans Manhave · November 16, 2010, 12:05:50 PM

It felt like I was buying a car. The only question that was missing was if there was a trade-in. Even the finance manager came into play. Did I intend to "drive" if off the lot now, etc?

Billy Welsh · November 16, 2010, 05:01:17 PM

Did the salesman have to "consult with the manager" about the discount?

Hans Manhave · November 16, 2010, 05:06:05 PM

Yes, but they didn't take long. I don't think I left a lot on the table, but I'll never know. I had a target price, target specs and financing was already arranged. Satisfy all those items we have a deal. I only wish I could buy a car that way (an hour and a half of e-mailing back and forth) whenever it becomes time to buy a car again (after Obama), cannot trust him nor his agencies, but I'm getting off topic.

Quote from: Billy Welsh on November 16, 2010, 05:01:17 PM
Did the salesman have to "consult with the manager" about the discount?

Coral · November 17, 2010, 03:11:05 PM

You can buy a car that way. I've done it. I knew what I wanted and found it on line, made an offer, it was accepted and I picked up the new car the next day (and filled out the paperwork then)

Hans Manhave · December 01, 2010, 11:08:26 AM

T710 installed. Using VMWare ESXi. Copied virtual machine from temp server to T710. Took some time, but result was positive. I didn't have a recognized 1Gb nic for the temp server so it operated at 100Mb.

Dedicated 8Gb and 4 processors to the virtual MS Server 2008 r2 install. Is this about what others do?

I have 8 nic ports. Configured for 1Gb, but am only using 1 port. Is this where I can gain some more speed?

Converted a MS Virtual PC 2007 machine into a VMWare vmachine. Works fine also, and got it off my own desktop.

Anyone have any suggestions as to how to squeeze the most speed out of it? I have 64GB of RAM.

Jeff Golas · December 01, 2010, 11:27:17 AM

If you say you dedicated 8gb towards one VM, you may want to rethink that unless its a database server or something that needs that much memory. I think I have 8 gig total in my box and usually dedicated 2-4 gig per VM depending on need. There's nothing on it thats overall hefty so I run 5 vms. You can always monitor memory useage after a couple weeks and adjust as necessary. With 64 gigs of ram you have plenty to go around so it may not be that big of deal either.

As far as having 8 nics...the reason for that is it virtualizes your NIC...you can either choose to have a single or multiple VMs shared on one physical nic port, or you can assign one nic port per VM to have full gigabit bandwidth for up to 8 VMs. Relate each VM to a real-deal physical server and you can see how this plays out. You could team Nics to get more bandwidth, but honestly I doubt your using full gigabit to begin with, so it wouldn't produce any measureable gain.

Hans Manhave · December 01, 2010, 11:39:02 AM

It just seems that I should be able to squeeze still a bit more speed out of something.

Using ESXi, are virtual Win2008 servers slower, faster or same speed as if installed as actual machines?

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 01, 2010, 11:43:30 AM

ESXi is very good with both memory and cpu management - your 2008 instance can get by with significantly fewer resources leaving lots of room for other VMs. Up until ESX v.4 - the recommended config was only 1 vCPU per vm guest - since a single virtual CPU can draw it's resources from multiple physical CPUs.

Considering the size of your shop - I'd give it 1 vCPU and 2GB RAM to start and bump up the memory as required. I would also utilize your many NICs by creating a management NIC and a Virtual Machine NIC.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 01, 2010, 11:45:25 AM

In theoretical benchmarks, 2008 on real iron might have a performance edge, but the hypervisors are very good these days and in your environment you will not be able to tell the difference.

Jeff Golas · December 01, 2010, 12:10:39 PM

Quote from: Rick Chisholm on December 01, 2010, 11:45:25 AM
In theoretical benchmarks, 2008 on real iron might have a performance edge, but the hypervisors are very good these days and in your environment you will not be able to tell the difference.

What he said, but honestly as far as I've seen installing 2003 under ESXI, its blazingly fast. In fact I timed it once....Windows server 2003 install, Sp2, and all Windows Updates (using Comcast 16/2 connection) - 1.5 hours boot to running server.

Having 15k rpm sas drives helps a lot too :-) If you're using a SAN with iscsi you may be seeing a little lag.

Hans Manhave · December 01, 2010, 12:42:06 PM

4 - 300GB 15K RPM SA SCSI 6Gbps 3.5in Hotplug Hard Drives for the files.
2 - 146GB 15K RPM SA SCSI 3Gbps 3.5in hotplug for the ESXi and VM OS's.

It is not particularly slow, but I was expecting a greater, blindingly fast, file serving speed. Maybe reducing the resources would actually speed it up. Just wondering what the virtualization hit might be. I guess 2008 runs a bit slower than 2003 would have done on the same hardware.

Considering the time it took to set up initially on a temporary server, I am quite happy that it only took about 45 minutes (outside the vm stores moving) to setup the permanent server. No time spent on configuring the domain server etc. at all. Setup ESXi and copy the necessary vm's, adjust for hardware and ready.

I'm running a Windows 2K vm to run older scan routing software that won't work on XP or newer. This takes hardly any resources. And then the production Win Server 2008 r2 (64bit). Will have at least one more virtual machine. Probably Windows7Ultimate for some phone logging / routing software.

Jeff Golas · December 01, 2010, 12:45:38 PM

Its a nice setup, but in ESXi you have to make sure you have your storage containers set up for each seperate raid array, and when you create or import VMs you have to make sure the OSs to into one container and the files go into other containers. I run ESXI off of an SD card and use the drives for straight up Vms - os/data and all.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 01, 2010, 04:03:29 PM

What are you using as a benchmark for the "slowness" of 2008 - the performance of an app like TAM, the time it takes to copy a large file / bunch of small files etc.

One thing about virtualization that I feel requires a bit of tuning is file I/O - which is dependent on both your disk subsystem and your network config - so scrutinize those very closely.

Hans Manhave · December 01, 2010, 06:10:35 PM

My benchmark? A Gateway DX4200-09 with 4GB RAM, AMD Phenom 9150e Quad Core processor which I was using as my temporary server setup. It performed rather well, extremely well if I consider the purchase price and that it was the "toy" of one of my minor children. It has a single SATA drive, no RAID. www.woot.com rocks!

A server definitely would want to have dual power supplies, and dual everything, etc. but it performed rather well. Never ran the MS SQL 2005 on it or some other programs. It could be that it was a little pickup truck and I didn't even halfway load it. While the T710 is a Titan and is ready to carry several tons of coal.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 01, 2010, 07:06:53 PM

What did the Gateway do faster? Or are you just saying it seemed faster?

Hans Manhave · December 02, 2010, 09:02:35 AM

File access, which is what I use mostly. I have yet to replace the switches in the system. It is using a 1Gb connection now between the server and my machine while before it was a 100Mb because I didn't have any server class nic's to use. File transfer (copying) is definitely faster, but using TAM or working with large spreadsheets it doesn't appear to be, actually may be a tad slower.

Jeff Zylstra · December 02, 2010, 11:31:53 AM

I feel a blog article coming on. Maybe something on file I/O tuning for servers and workstations? Which settings & how to adjust them, how to measure performance and which tools to use, measuring traffic on the network, etc.... All good stuff. I know how to set the size my page file in windows and maybe know how to check frame size on NICs, but I don't know the relationship to file server and workstation settings, if any. Edumacate us, oh guru of the gigbit!

Hans Manhave · December 02, 2010, 12:31:55 PM

An optimized Server 2008 r2 settings white paper maybe? ESXi may not be to blame at all. I have to see when we can set the VM settings to 1 processor. There is definitely a kink in the cable somewhere. May have to be researched during the weekend.

Jeff Zylstra · December 02, 2010, 01:21:06 PM

I agree that the file access response time seems to have a slight delay in it with Server 08. It seems like my 7 year old Server 2000 box gave faster response on most file requests. There just seems to be a slight delay before any request is processed, whether it is file requests from a workstation, or when you screen displays when you are at the console. Maybe the new firewall or other enhanced security and/or logging is slowing things down. No tangible proof, other than the "seat of my pants" says so.

Hans Manhave · December 02, 2010, 01:44:57 PM

Any thoughts one what this article says?

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006619

Above reference from: http://www.barkingseal.com/2010/07/slow-network-performance-for-windows-2008-on-vmware-esxi/

Currently experiencing a bit of intermittent slowness. Sometimes it flies, sometimes I am waiting for take-off. A bit odd behavior. Could be the switch, I'm thinking. It has not been replaced yet.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 02, 2010, 02:07:04 PM

we disable TOE on all our Dells with Broadcoms - seems to be a source of many headaches. Kind of stupid since the purpose of TOE is performance enhancement.

Networking / switching is very important in vmware environments... if you have end-2-end GigE and switches that support it - you will also want to research enabling Jumbo Frames.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 02, 2010, 02:08:26 PM

looks like that link is talking about disabling it for the vNIC in the OS - so that's also worth doing.

Hans Manhave · December 02, 2010, 11:42:36 PM

What do people use for backup device? I have an internal Dell RD1000 (SATA).

I don't believe I can use that as the SATA cannot pass through nicely because it is on the Dell Perc H700 controller which also does a RAID.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 03, 2010, 08:15:52 AM

depends on how you feel about risk...

you have lots of options - snapshots, cloning, backing up entire vmdk, backing up from within the vm... there are lots of 3rd party utils for doing backups. Vmware has http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/consolidated_backup.html

Hans Manhave · December 03, 2010, 09:31:58 AM

I want to avoid risk. I'm a big boy and I have a big gun and know how to use it, but I'd rather live in peace and tranquility with my family around me. I have had my scares of wondering how to recover a lost file and even the main server drive. Had a lightning event around 1991 or 92 and was short about a week of backups. Not good. Didn't lose a smidgen of data in the October event, even though we were backed up on LTO tapes and I was ignorant of the fact that one has to treat a hosted database different than a TAM DBF or other database.

I have to be able to recover yesterday's individual file (spreadsheet, word doc, etc) as needed. Not necessarily the whole VM instance (am keeping a backup of those too at some yet-to-be-determined interval).

At this moment, I just want a daily backup that I can take off site.

It appeared to us (son and I) that I could take that RD1000 off the current controller, insert a server class SATA controller card and all will be well. It could work now also, but it would require a daily initialization of the backup cartridge which is more complex than backup activity should be.

Will study the material at the link you provided.

Jeff Zylstra · December 03, 2010, 03:02:57 PM

I use Acronis which does support VMs (although I don't have a VM), and I use removable USB hard drives which I take off site. Again, I have no idea how it works with VMs, but I've had good luck with it after I fixed a bad upgrade.

What I've found with backups is that if you don't do a test restore once in a while, nothing much else matters because tapes and drives can fail, upgrades and changes are made and the backup that was made will not always restore properly. Especially if you are relying on incremental or partial backups stitched together to make a complete backup. I always do a FULL backup and avoid partials of any kind. I'm just not smart enough to make them work reliably. Or maybe I'm paranoid enough not to trust them.

Hans Manhave · December 03, 2010, 03:10:42 PM

I have a few eSATA 6Gbps cards ordered to re-route the data cable for this backup unit away from the RAID controller. Then all should be well.

From that link, I can tell that backup is being thought about, but I cannot tell what the solution is.
Does ESXi claim that a backup solution is included or that it can be downloaded or can be bought?

Hans Manhave · December 03, 2010, 10:16:49 PM

This made life a lot better today. I'm thinking I have reached max speed in a networked TAM environment, about the same as on the previous Dell PE2600. I guess once you have 1Gb networking and 15K rpm SCSI/SATA and don't have hundreds of users there are no bottlenecks that an enduser can improve on.

Quote from: HMan on December 02, 2010, 01:44:57 PM
Any thoughts one what this article says?

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006619

Above reference from: http://www.barkingseal.com/2010/07/slow-network-performance-for-windows-2008-on-vmware-esxi/

Currently experiencing a bit of intermittent slowness. Sometimes it flies, sometimes I am waiting for take-off. A bit odd behavior. Could be the switch, I'm thinking. It has not been replaced yet.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 04, 2010, 08:15:47 AM

I've seen many of time how, given the same hardware, one application can do something faster than another - so you may be at a point where the application is your bottleneck.

Be that as it may - new "tunables" will be revealed as time goes on and tweaking your VM host and guests will always benefit in some way. Just try not to tinker so much you break it - I've done that many times.

Hans Manhave · December 05, 2010, 06:23:18 PM

I am wondering, is it fine to install TAM in the remote desktop application? Then I could run certain things from there (i.e. Night Utils) and that should run at top speed. Does one the install a separate remote host, even if there is no off site? Maybe install some other programs on the host so they can be run through RDP? I think it is running pretty nicely now, but I have so many data requests at certain periods that I would like to free up some time so I can program (read: automate) a lot of these tasks and put them on other people's desktop to execute. My earlier mention elsewhere about Tableau would be one example. Extract TAM stuff and stick it into something that could use more advanced tools.

One thing I am looking forward to is duplicating the VM and testing the next TAM software on. For as little actual documentation one receives with that, it would need several days of deep testing to see what moved to where etc.