mattx Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 Righty Ho, me possible got money to spend on some new kit. Looking for some suggestions in regards to spec in moving 3 of our servers [ 2003 ] to a VMware ESXi box - with the possibility of a slow migration to 2008 at some point in the future. [ Don't worry about the SAN, that's taken care of ] - I like IBM kit, I also like HP kit, I also like big powerful kit with lots of grunt and flashly lights on. So come on, give me something to look at !!
AXE Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 big powerful kit with lots of grunt and flashly lights on. A sound basis for any decision.
mattx Posted March 17, 2010 Author Posted March 17, 2010 A sound basis for any decision. It's a no brainer - when our head is giving tours of the school he loves showing them the IT Office with the rack in - as it lots of flashy lights on.
Duke Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 A sound basis for any decision. +1 on that! I know you didn't mention them, but the Dell R710's are well worth a look. Chris
jamesreedersmith Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 +1 on that! I know you didn't mention them, but the Dell R710's are well worth a look. Chris Seconded!
Ric_ Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 You also fail to mention Sun! I have two of these... you said you wanted grunt and you don't get much more than 24 cores and 256GB RAM (especially in 2u!) - they also take 8 disks if you want to increase your flashing light count. I only have 16 cores and 32GB RAM in each
Duke Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 Yeah, I thought about mentioning them too actually, the Sun servers look great for virtualisation! My only concern is that I haven't heard much about Oracle's commitment to the x86 server space.
mattx Posted March 17, 2010 Author Posted March 17, 2010 You also fail to mention Sun! I have two of these... you said you wanted grunt and you don't get much more than 24 cores and 256GB RAM (especially in 2u!) - they also take 8 disks if you want to increase your flashing light count. I only have 16 cores and 32GB RAM in each Lordy, I'm only virtualizing 3 servers !!
tmcd35 Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 I've just bought a HP DL160 G6 with 2 x Xeon Quads and 24 Gb Ram for around the £2.5k mark
mattx Posted March 17, 2010 Author Posted March 17, 2010 I've just bought a HP DL160 G6 with 2 x Xeon Quads and 24 Gb Ram for around the £2.5k mark 24 Gig ? How did you get that so cheap - explain more. I'm currently looking at the DL380 G6
DMcCoy Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 24 Gig ? How did you get that so cheap - explain more. I'm currently looking at the DL380 G6 2GB sticks possibly. The i7 based servers are triple channel memory so you often get 18 memory slots, although my R710s were 4GB modules iirc
Ric_ Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 Lordy, I'm only virtualizing 3 servers !! Think of the TCO reduction by consolidating ALL your servers (and those for all your neighbouring schools)! The savings could be you extra LEDs that could be mounted on rack blanking plates and made to flash randomly 1
Duke Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 The savings could be you extra LEDs that could be mounted on rack blanking plates and made to flash randomly (seriously, does anyone know where I can buy one of these?)
glennda Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 I would say dl380 they are great machines currently have 12 of the g5's and 4 g4's still along with a couple of Dl180's. We have a few of the G5's fibre connected to the MSA 2000 for running VM's which we use on KVM under ubuntu. one of the boxes has 64gb ram in and currently runs about 15 virtual machines no fuss. Toby
glennda Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 Custom make one. Make a box out of acrylic drill holes in front for led to stick out of acording to the board - then make students make you a board that has 50 led's on it in a nice formation and stick it all together. steal some rack mounts of an old switch and jobs a gooden! Toby
Duke Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 Staff: "What do all those flashy lights do then?" Tech Support: "Oh, that's the, er, Management Protocol... Consolidator... Interface... Connectivity Device. Very complicated and expensive!" Staff: "Oh, so that's why your budget was really high this year?" Tech Support: "Uh, sure..." Staff: "Nice new car by the way." Ahem, back on topic... (and for the record I don't drive so I'm not planning it!)
tmcd35 Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 24 Gig ? How did you get that so cheap - explain more. I'm currently looking at the DL380 G6 Just so happen to have the PO sitting next to me HP DL160 G6 - £980 Extra Xeon Quad Core 2Ghz - £228.93 12 x Kingston 2Gb DDR3 - £469.68 2 x HP 160Gb HDD - £110 HP 750Gb HDD - £235 12 x Startech DDR Coolers - £40.80 IBM NetXtreme-II Dual Port - £134 DLink 10/100 USB -£21.99 HP 4ch SAS Cable - £35
jamesreedersmith Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 Just specify a Microprocessor And Zeon Dynamic Access Machine Xpanded 5 series system Costs about £16k and is great fun, easy to use and control.
mattx Posted March 17, 2010 Author Posted March 17, 2010 Just so happen to have the PO sitting next to me HP DL160 G6 - £980 Extra Xeon Quad Core 2Ghz - £228.93 12 x Kingston 2Gb DDR3 - £469.68 2 x HP 160Gb HDD - £110 HP 750Gb HDD - £235 12 x Startech DDR Coolers - £40.80 IBM NetXtreme-II Dual Port - £134 DLink 10/100 USB -£21.99 HP 4ch SAS Cable - £35 Where did you purchase this from ? Please.
tmcd35 Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 Misco. The only thing to watch out for is the Ram. It's not HP so I'll find out when the bits arrive if it'll all work together. I've used this Ram: KINGSTON Memory/2GB 1333MHz DDR3 ECC CL9 DIMM with - Misco.co.uk (with edu discount), which according to HP's manuals: HP ProLiant DL160 G6 Server series - Product documentation should be compatible. The other thing to note is that the price here is for the 3.5" Hot Swap drive bay version. There is a non-Hot Swap drives version at the same spec for around £750ish. Oh, and these Xeons are not hyper-threaded. 1
mattx Posted March 17, 2010 Author Posted March 17, 2010 Misco. The only thing to watch out for is the Ram. It's not HP so I'll find out when the bits arrive if it'll all work together. I've used this Ram: KINGSTON Memory/2GB 1333MHz DDR3 ECC CL9 DIMM with - Misco.co.uk (with edu discount), which according to HP's manuals: HP ProLiant DL160 G6 Server series - Product documentation should be compatible. The other thing to note is that the price here is for the 3.5" Hot Swap drive bay version. There is a non-Hot Swap drives version at the same spec for around £750ish. Oh, and these Xeons are not hyper-threaded. Thanks - bit of a show stopper with the Xeons......... I was getting all excited.
tmcd35 Posted March 17, 2010 Posted March 17, 2010 Thanks - bit of a show stopper with the Xeons......... I was getting all excited. You need 16 threads? It's still 8-cores and supports all the Virtualisation goodness. Or is the 2Ghz a little slow?
mattx Posted March 17, 2010 Author Posted March 17, 2010 You need 16 threads? It's still 8-cores and supports all the Virtualisation goodness. Or is the 2Ghz a little slow? I'm looking at possible 2008 server migration at some point as well + a possible LAMP server going on. It's certainly on the table as a possibility though. Also why is my spell checker suddenly not working on FireFox 3.6 ?
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