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New server hardware recommendations

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  • Hardware
  • NAS / RAID
  • Business Computing
  • Servers
Last response: in Business Computing
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October 26, 2013 7:56:06 AM

I am looking at replacing our old NAS at work with a new server. The server will be used for server 2012 essentials R2 running as a VM on a hyper-v role which will be running as the domain controller / dhcp server / file server. I will also looking at running a router as a VM something along the lines of Untangle.

There are 15 employees within the business, the file server will serve word/excel docs and a access database backend.

I was going to build my own server but thought it would be safer to go with Dell poweredge tower. The only thing that worries me about the dells is they come with a 350w PSU which seems quite small. I have been looking on their site but not quite sure what sort of build to go for.

I came up with two quick builds:

Poweredge T110 II:

Processor: Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1230v2, 4C/8T, 3.30GHz, 8M Cache, 69W, Turbo
Memory: 16GB Memory (2x8GB) 1600Mhz Dual Ranked Low Volt UDIMM
Primary RAID Controller Card: PERC H200
Primary Hard Drive: 1TB, SATA, 3.5-in, 7.2K RPM x 2
Network Cards: Intel® Gigabit ET Dual Port

Poweredge T320:

Processor: Intel® Xeon® E5-2407 2.20GHz, 10M Cache, 6.4GT/s QPI, No Turbo, 4C, 80W, Max Mem 1066MHz
Memory: 4GB UDIMM, 1600 MHz, Low Volt, Dual Rank, x8 Data Width - x4
RAID Controller: PERC H710
Hard Drives: 1TB, SATA, 3.5-in, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive x 2 (Raid 1)
Network Adapter: Intel Ethernet I350 DP 1Gb Server Adapter

The T320 comes out at £550 more than the T110. Would the T110 be sufficient for my needs? I was thinking if the T110 is sufficient I could use it for a year and then move downgrade it to a replication server and buy something better if needs be. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

More about : server hardware recommendations

October 26, 2013 1:14:59 PM

I'm not as familiar honestly with the Dell PowerEdge line as we mostly work with the HP ProLiant servers, but these systems are nearly identical to similar HP ProLiant so I'll try and help out where I can!

First off, what is your Hypervisor actually going to be? Are you planning to run just the free Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, or are you purchasing additional licensing for running Hyper-V within something like Server 2012 Standard R2?

All in all these two server systems should offer pretty comparable performance configured identically. The difference here is the T320 offers greater room for expandability than the T110 and that is why you're looking at a higher cost. If your primary VM is basically working as a file server for several small files like documents, then there wouldn't be much need for high-performance storage like SAS or RAID 10 support. However, the database may be a different story. Even as your business grows and access to the server necessitates higher demands, you may find that operating on a basic RAID controller with a single set of 1 TB 7k SATA hard drives for BOTH of your VMs plus your host operating system may bring you limited performance capabilities. Again, if this is ALL you want to do on your server and you don't want to support any additional demand, then yes the T110 should be able to handle what you are looking at doing, but I'd say you aren't going to be able to support any additional virtual machines or a great increase in drive access due to the limitation on storage throughput with everything running on that.

The benefit then of the T320 is that it would support upgrading to additional SATA or even SAS hard drives for improved capacity and performance. We have done this before on servers for customers needing both storage capacity and performance. By installing one RAID 1 array of two 450 GB 15k SAS drives, we can install the host OS on there, plus run the OS VHDX for each of the VMs they need. Then there's a separate RAID 1 array of two 2 TB 7k SATA hard drives for instance, and we can either create a VHDX on there to attach to the domain/file server for standard storage, or pass the entire array through to that VM. There are many ways of doing it of course.

I'm honestly not much of a fan of the Xeon E5-2407 processors. Don't get me wrong they work alright and will get the job done, but for the money they just seem very stripped down and weak. I mean the E3-1230 architecture might not be as "robust" but it operates at 3.3 Ghz, a full Ghz faster than the Xeon E5-2407, and it features Hyperthreading for addition multithreaded efficiency. If you could bump it up to an E5-2420 processor then there would be a pretty nice bump up in cores and threads, plus turbo boost, to give it greater performance for virtual machines than the Xeon E3-1230v2.
October 27, 2013 2:59:20 AM

Thanks Choucove, that's very comprehensive. I was going to use Essentials 2012 R2 as the host as that's a new feature for Essentials R2. I tested Hyper-v server and like it however I didn't realise that you needed to manage it from a win 8 machine. So to keep thing simple as we're still on win 7 I will stick with Essentials as the host.

I think i'm going to go with the T110 for the price. For £700 I can set it up, benchmark it and if there it isnt sufficient relegate it as a workstation or test system. Without benchmarking I am just guessing at what performance is required.

As I said I like the idea of Hyper-v server, ideally I would build my own with hyper-v server sitting on an SD card then have a Raid 1 or 10 array of Crucial M500's to run the VM's and hold the data. Replicate that internally to another server for high availability and get a nice backup solution going.

Related resources
October 28, 2013 7:21:38 AM

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2013/09/03/under...

Will you look at that, one of my biggest complaints of Server 2012 Essentials has just been addressed! Given what you are looking for, and the addition of Hyper-V into Server 2012 Essentials R2, then that's the route I would suggest!

Running your own hardware can be a great way of saving some costs or getting higher performance options at the same cost (such as SSDs or more memory) but the downside is all of the support falls on you. Ensuring that everything is 100% compatible and stable for your needs can be pretty daunting if this is a business-critical server system, because if something doesn't work right or if something goes down, it's up to you to troubleshoot and resolve. Now, part of this same thing holds true even with a pre-built big name brand server system, as you're still going to be the one working on it.

I've built and utilized custom-built servers before (mostly Supermicro) and even have a couple here at my office. They run the same as the HP servers I've also utilized, and perhaps have cost a little less. One thing in particular that I've noticed, though, is everything in the HP server is built to be perfect together. All the cables are in the right place. All the accessories or add-in cards are done in just the right way to allow you to upgrade without having to change cables around, etc. And all of the drivers and support are readily available.

The Dell T110 is a pretty affordable cost and you're going to get a decent performance server at that cost for what you need as well. But since you do know what you are doing and if you are willing to take on the responsibilities of a custom-built server system for maintenance and support, then try it! You can build a custom system using a barebones or piecing together everything individually, but then yes do your testing and benchmarking to see how it all goes. Like you said, if it doesn't work as you wish ideally, you can still utilize it as a workstation or even for some other role such as a backup server or replication system.
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