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2 dual core sockets or 1 quad core?

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chumad   07-25-2009 at 05:31:18 PM

I've got a website and a very CPU intensive database (MSSQL).

I need to put both on a single server and I'm wondering - would I be better off going with a 2 socket, dual core setup or a single quad core setup?

Also, should I consider virtualizing the servers or just a single OS (sorry if this is off topic for the forum, ignore it if so :) )

Thanks for any tips :)

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o1die   07-26-2009 at 01:51:07 AM

Checkout the asus Z8NA-DC6 dual xeon server board with 6 gb of patriot viper memory for $259 after $20 rebate at newegg. You're getting the memory for free after rebate. This board fits any atx case, and uses the 5xxx series socket 1366 core i7 xeons. They start at $199 at newegg. You can start out using just one cpu, and add another later if needed. But be sure to use the same cpu model if you add a second one.


Message edited by o1die on 07-26-2009 at 01:59:40 AM
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MikeJRamsey   07-26-2009 at 02:02:02 AM

MySQL doesn't scale well on quad cores so go dual dual core. CPU is less important than the rest.

64-bit and as much memory as you can afford; 32 GB is reasonable.

Go for Serial Attached SCSI; It scales to more than four attached disks and you can attach SATA drives to it.

Battery-backed write cache is available in most RAID cards; needed to allow InnoDB to commit without disk write head movement. Allocate total memory - 2GB to InnoDB buffer pool.

SSD for random reads; sucks wind on random writes.

HDDs with low latencies and high random write throughput.

You are looking at:
Dual Quad Core E5430 (2.66 GHz)
32 GB 667 MHz RAM
8 x 73 GB 15k RPM SAS
Dual power supplies

$6k ?

You would virtualize a much bigger machine to get a couple of virtual machines that looked like the above. Does that help?

Reply to MikeJRamsey
GhislainG   07-26-2009 at 02:05:41 AM

chumad wrote :

I've got a website and a very CPU intensive database (MSSQL).

I need to put both on a single server and I'm wondering - would I be better off going with a 2 socket, dual core setup or a single quad core setup?

Also, should I consider virtualizing the servers or just a single OS (sorry if this is off topic for the forum, ignore it if so :) )

Thanks for any tips :)


If it's very CPU intensive, virtualizing it isn't advisable as it will run slower. You didn't specify which CPUs you're looking at, therefore it's difficult to answer your question. Let's just say that a single 5570 is faster than two dual core CPUs, no matter which ones you select.

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MikeJRamsey   07-26-2009 at 02:29:17 AM

GhislainG wrote :

If it's very CPU intensive, virtualizing it isn't advisable as it will run slower. You didn't specify which CPUs you're looking at, therefore it's difficult to answer your question. Let's just say that a single 5570 is faster than two dual core CPUs, no matter which ones you select.


The X5570 Gainstown is a quad core CPU. Very recent work has improved scaling on Quad core but problems remain.

http://mysqlha.blogspot.com/
"Thursday, July 23, 2009
Relevance in the datacenter
Do you know SQL or do you NoSQL? MySQL has been very popular for internet-scale deployments. But times have changed and there are alternatives. The alternatives either out-scale or out-avail MySQL and this is more important than providing the features of an RDBMS for many applications. My prediction is that there will be much less usage of MySQL for internet-scale applications in the future if we do not make big changes.

What are the problems and what can we do to fix them? From my perspective there are two problems:

1. MySQL is not efficient on modern hardware (multicore, many disk IOPs)
2. Replication is very expensive to manage"

Reply to MikeJRamsey
GhislainG   07-26-2009 at 02:38:47 AM

Quote :

Dual Quad Core E5430 (2.66 GHz)

The Core E5430 (2.66 GHz) is a Quad Core: http://processorfinder.intel.com/d [...] Spec=SLANU

You may want to review some benchmarks like http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=532. BTW, chumad is running MSSQL, not MySQL. MSSQL scales very well on Quad Core CPUs.

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mindless728   07-26-2009 at 03:04:09 AM

Supermicro has a motherboard dual LGA1366 (i know you don't really need 2 sockets) but has 18 DDR3 slots (with the 4GB/stick DDR3 = 72GB memory)

Reply to mindless728
MikeJRamsey   07-26-2009 at 05:54:42 AM

GhislainG wrote :

Quote :

Dual Quad Core E5430 (2.66 GHz)

The Core E5430 (2.66 GHz) is a Quad Core: http://processorfinder.intel.com/d [...] Spec=SLANU

You may want to review some benchmarks like http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=532. BTW, chumad is running MSSQL, not MySQL. MSSQL scales very well on Quad Core CPUs.


Wow. You are right. Scratch that. Time for a beer.

Reply to MikeJRamsey
amdfangirl   07-27-2009 at 04:08:42 PM

^ Just get a dual-socket quad now, and get another quad later.

Reply to amdfangirl
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