Need Server CPU Advice

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
M

msllc

Distinguished
Feb 20, 2013
36
1
18,535
Hi All,

I am eyeballing a Dell PowerEdge 520 for my company with 50 users onsite, and 10 remote users. I will run Windows 2012 R2 Standard with 4 VMs - 1) Doman Controller/File Share Server 2) Exchange Server 2013 (200 email accounts), POS Server (4 users), DirectAccess Server.

My question is, which Intel Xeon CPU should I get to properly handle the load? I am considering dual Intel® Xeon® E5-2440 v2 1.90GHz, 20M Cache, 7.2GT/s QPI, Turbo, 8C, 95W, but was wondering if I should consider lower or higher given this setup. Also, want longevity, that is...want to run Windows Server 2015 when that comes out.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
 
Solution
kanewolf


Based on the Intel ARK saying that the CPU you picked is a triple RAM channel implementation, then you should go to 96GB or 48GB of RAM for...
Sort by date Sort by votes
kanewolf

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
May 29, 2013
37,408
3,312
156,790
How much RAM are you going to have? What storage infrastructure? Those two things can impact performance as much as CPU choice. That CPU is a triple channel RAM, so you want to think in multiples of three for RAM (48GB, 96GB, etc) rather than the standard 16GB, 32GB etc.
For what you are doing, you don't need a lot of CPU.

The question you haven't asked, is redundancy. A single server with all your VMs and bare metal is a single point of failure. Lose it and you have no productivity... Should you be looking at two servers you can split the functionality so that if you lose one you aren't totally dead in the water.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

msllc

Distinguished
Feb 20, 2013
36
1
18,535
Currently, I have the server on six (6) SAS 15K rpm hard drives in a RAID 10 array (with additional drive as hot spare). All the VMs OS Drives (C) will reside on the RAID 10 array.

All VMs Data Drive (D) will either be on a separate RAID array or perhaps a Drobo B800i/B1200i via iSCSI.

Currently, the server is spec'd with 64GB of RAM (4 x 16GB modules), but can obviously scale up if need be.

Hyper-V replication will be activated and sent to a retired primary server. Backups via USB 3.0 external drive.

So are you saying my CPU specs are ok...but I should perhaps consider 96GB of RAM?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
kanewolf

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
May 29, 2013
37,408
3,312
156,790


Based on the Intel ARK saying that the CPU you picked is a triple RAM channel implementation, then you should go to 96GB or 48GB of RAM for optimum performance. Your exchange server will probably thank you for more RAM...
Otherwise I think you should be fine with your CPU choice.

You only get two 1GE NICs with that chassis. You might want to consider an extra NIC card to handle your replication traffic or to segregate your remote users.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
kanewolf

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
May 29, 2013
37,408
3,312
156,790


That is always a tough question. I think we always overbuild because you get yelled at less for spending a few extra $$ than you do if the performance stinks.

But, you probably can, since you have an unfilled CPU socket. If you find out your performance is low, you could add a second CPU and redistribute the 6 RAM sticks to the two sockets.

Again how much yelling is involved for the $ difference vs the yelling for bad performance????
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom