Been looking to do some server consolidation over the last few days and came across these and was wondering if anyone here uses them or similar?
PowerEdge C6100 Rack Server Details | Dell
Muchos Gracias!
Printable View
Been looking to do some server consolidation over the last few days and came across these and was wondering if anyone here uses them or similar?
PowerEdge C6100 Rack Server Details | Dell
Muchos Gracias!
Hi Sister_AnnexQuote:
Originally Posted by sister_annex
The form factor has been out for a while and is generally the best value out there for CPU density /£, there are also solutions from Supermicro and Intel solutions some of which are AMD and have 2.5" disks .
Super Micro Computer, Inc. - 2U Twin^2 Solutions
Intel's S2600JF Server Board - Intel's H2000 Server System - YouTube
Our typical customers using this platform are ;
3D Rendering/Animation - A cool company that uses the Supermicro is Axis Animation - Axis Animation - These guys do some pretty awesome computergame trailers
VM Servers - This company use an AMD version for their Virtual server compute product GreenQloud - Truly Green Cloud Hosting & Online Storage
HPC - Used for number crunching
The platform is great in terms of ;
Low cost High Density ie Blade without the price tag;
Is modular and hotswap
The platform lacks
Storage capacity 3 x 3.5" SATA/SAS per Server Node - (there are 2.5" Disk versions that have 6 x Disk/Server)
RAID controller is limited to what is onboard - So will either be Intel/AMD SATA or embedded SAS controller
Things to watch out for
It will use more power than you think on load a fully populated unit will draw circa 1400W (As is 4 Servers in 2U = 8 Xeon or Opteron)
How many and what types of Server are you looking to consolidate?
What hypervisor are you are looking at using ?
Cheers
Andy
Saw the intel ones in the flesh last week. Have to say they looked pretty cool. Essentially a similar spec to the DL360 just in a much smaller space. Ideal if you need high CPU/Ram requirements and just use SANS for storage. and just boot Sata Doms or SD cards.
Intel have also just released a new 24 2.5" storage device which is supposed to run Open-E well (its being sent to Open-E to be certified).
Although for a large SAN a 4U 72 2.5" bay SuperMicro Chassis could be awesome running Open-E
Andy @VeryPC,
They would be used for Hyper-V Server consolidation. I suppose a little heads up, we currently have 8 Hyper-V hosts most with direct storage, we have a SAN that has two massive servers on it.
We are looking to replace our Dell PE 1900s (which are about 5 years old). We will more than likely be dropping three (maybe 4) servers (<1Tb HDD & 16Gb RAM in each machine) into this one chassis (if possible). We were thinking of clustering the 4 together for HA (again if possible i know SAN usage is required for this).
We may be barking up the wrong tree in terms of what we think we could do with this but it's better to find out now than after spending a (small) fortune
Thanks again
Mark
Yes they shouldn't have a problem replacing these. Personally I would just keep the OS on the local machines and then use the SAN storage for the VM's. One thing to note is you have 4 servers running of 2 PSUs (although very powerful). You need to ensure you have UPS redundancy otherwise you will kill everything.
If you are looking for low cost SAN solutions which provide Active-Active Configurations Open-E is very easy to use and setup. an Active-Active cluster can be setup in around 25 mins with no single point of failure and MPIO on the san enviroment (requires two servers, lots of nics with Open-E installed and a couple of switches) :)
We have fired some of them out, also also if you are looking at consolidating storage you could look at Dell EqualLogic PS-M4110 Blade Array | DellQuote:
Originally Posted by sister_annex
I do have the say the Equallogic units are brilliant. Although i only say this due to the intergration with VMware (host intergration tools it does it all for you from creating luns on san to joining them to all your hosts.) Although for use with Hyper-V there are more cost effective options IMHO.Quote:
Originally Posted by ICTLTD
Very True, to be honest equalogic rarely is an option for most schools so they tend to have a mixture of PowerEdge RXXX Servers and MDXXXX Storage as a more cost effective solution.Quote:
Originally Posted by glennda
I'm sure if money was no object we would quite happily go for these ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by glennda
Well IMHO the San hardware is good and nice and shiney. But the main selling feature for us is the VMware intergration which they don't have with Hyper-V I don't think.Quote:
Originally Posted by sister_annex
You could probably setup two sans with Active-Active failover and MPIO on supermicro or intel kit (via either custom build/VeryPC/Broadberry etc) for the same cost of an Equallogic - for HA reasons I know which i would prefer!
You could with Dell standard kit also. But for high end consolidation into minimum spaces no other kit comes near to Equalllogic IMHO. Equallogic is expensive but some may have the money and the need.Quote:
Originally Posted by glennda
I know of one school that needs to run the entire school (over 1000 client 2000 user 80TB+ Storage requirement) network including power failover and swtches in one rack due to space. So although there may be cheaper options they may not always be practical or offer sufficient support.
If money is no object Ecuallogic is great, but for nearly every school money is an object. :)
Sent a PM :)
I'll give you a call shortly (got a chap drilling through the office wall at the momentQuote:
Originally Posted by VeryPC_Ed