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The Boss loved my laptop so much ..........

post #1 of 18
4/11/06 at 6:24pm
Thread Starter 
He bought the servers

2 Dell 6850's extremely high spec with

Quad 64-bit Intel® Xeon® Processor 7040 at 3.0 GHz / 2x2MB L2 cache / 667FSB / Dual-Core.

I now have a major server upgrade coming up after the Easter Break

This system is for a clustered file / sql server 24x7 production system.

Happy Holidays LOL
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post #2 of 18
4/11/06 at 9:26pm
I'm sorry. Not for the server upgrade but for getting Xeons... .
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post #3 of 18
4/11/06 at 10:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sorienor
I'm sorry. Not for the server upgrade but for getting Xeons... .
I second this... horrible time to buy servers and workstations.
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post #4 of 18
4/11/06 at 11:12pm
Shoulda bought Opterons or waited...
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post #5 of 18
4/12/06 at 4:30am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anemone
Shoulda bought Opterons or waited...
AMD Opterons on HP (Compaq) platform including shared storage, backup system etc were coming in £30,000+ more than Dell.
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post #6 of 18
4/12/06 at 3:20pm
But theres a reason for that...

we have just switched from dell to HP.
and i have to say the HP gear is just better in every way... the ILO advanced and SIM is a joy to use! i gave up trying to get openmanage to work properly..

but we are sticking with dell for laptops and desktops..

the shocking thing is that even the base-spec cheepo Optiplex gx520 is dual core now too :O
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post #7 of 18
4/12/06 at 4:21pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by neo_vr
But theres a reason for that...

we have just switched from dell to HP.
and i have to say the HP gear is just better in every way... the ILO advanced and SIM is a joy to use! i gave up trying to get openmanage to work properly..

but we are sticking with dell for laptops and desktops..

the shocking thing is that even the base-spec cheepo Optiplex gx520 is dual core now too :O

The Xeons the dudes above are slagging off were just released in November 2005. They are Intel's latest and greatest offering (which WILL be replaced again in five years).

Our current Dell Poweredge 6400's have never failed in 5 years - 24x7, I've only every manually failed over for service pack updates. (1 drive in the storage raid failed, replaced and rebuilt within 3 hours).

I don't use OpenManage. I do the usual with any dell offering (I have 100+ clients), they get flattened and reinstalled.

Our sister company (linn.co.uk) have had 30+ HP Servers recently installed. 6 drive failures in 3 months seriously put the Boss Man of the HP/Compaq/AMD solution.

And we are talking Compaq Servers, not HP.

Dougie.
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post #8 of 18
4/12/06 at 4:30pm
wow and to think hard drive failures have nothing to do with where you bought them..now if you had said 6 base system component failures I would see why the Boss would not want to go that way.
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post #9 of 18
4/12/06 at 4:34pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sorienor
wow and to think hard drive failures have nothing to do with where you bought them..now if you had said 6 base system component failures I would see why the Boss would not want to go that way.
When you buy 30+ servers, they are normally purchased direct,with Gold standard service, as these were.
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post #10 of 18
4/12/06 at 6:48pm
I think that the intent here is to point out that Seagate, hitachi, maxtor, fugitsu, etc. are making the same drives for both companies. Neither Dell not HP/Compaq is making the HDs in question. They all have about the same MTBF, so when several fail at the same time, or live incredibly long lives, it's random. MTBF is the mean time... so it can be 10 minutes or 1000 years, but the middle of the bell curve of failures is at 1.5 million hours or whatever... (which by the way is calculated based on the MTBF of individual components and measured by having an array of say 10,000 drives and noting that how long it takes them to die)
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post #11 of 18
4/12/06 at 7:23pm
I do agree with you.. we have 6 yr old dell 6300's that still work fine.. the occasional hdd failure and most their fans have failed too..
but managing 60-odd servers, and another 60 at the remote datacentre is a doddle with insight manager, and the added support for blades and VMware is a bonus.
only time will tell how the HP's are for reliability...

I dont count hdds as h/w failures.. we had a full shutdown last weekend, including our Escala power4 box, that has a big 15disc san in it..
on powerup 2 discs failed... raid5 array - 2drives = fooked

its just a fact of life, 24/7 drives are designed to be that.. for that reason they dont support many stop/start cycles.
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post #12 of 18
4/12/06 at 7:36pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by neo_vr
I dont count hdds as h/w failures.. we had a full shutdown last weekend, including our Escala power4 box, that has a big 15disc san in it..
on powerup 2 discs failed... raid5 array - 2drives = fooked

its just a fact of life, 24/7 drives are designed to be that.. for that reason they dont support many stop/start cycles.
Well, RAID 10 is the way to go in my configuration requirements, though RAID 1 will suffice for the transactions logs.

My point was, Dell Enterprise Systems give a serious bang per buck for your requirements.

Dougie
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post #13 of 18
4/12/06 at 7:40pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by neo_vr
I dont count hdds as h/w failures.. we had a full shutdown last weekend, including our Escala power4 box, that has a big 15disc san in it..
on powerup 2 discs failed... raid5 array - 2drives = fooked

its just a fact of life, 24/7 drives are designed to be that.. for that reason they dont support many stop/start cycles.
Well, RAID 10 is the way to go in my configuration requirements, though RAID 1 will suffice for the transactions logs.

My point was, Dell Enterprise Systems give a serious bang per buck for your requirements.

Dougie.

edit:-

Good (old) read on RAID levels for SQL :-

http://www.databasejournal.com/featu...le.php/3114651
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post #14 of 18
4/12/06 at 7:50pm
not that it's really viable at the enterprise level yet, but raid 6 is pretty sweet... it can handle 2 simultaneous drive failures. It requires a lot more processing than raid 5, which is why it's taking it's sweet time getting to market.
The advantage being that with raid 10 you waste 50% of your space, while on a typical 16 drive array with raid 6 you only lose 12.5%.
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post #15 of 18
4/12/06 at 7:56pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DarthPierce
not that it's really viable at the enterprise level yet, but raid 6 is pretty sweet... it can handle 2 simultaneous drive failures. It requires a lot more processing than raid 5, which is why it's taking it's sweet time getting to market.
The advantage being that with raid 10 you waste 50% of your space, while on a typical 16 drive array with raid 6 you only lose 12.5%.
Waste what ?. If you require 24x7 cost is not really an option.

Raid 5 is brain dead if you can afford more drives.

If you use Raid 5 you must feel you can restore to last backup with 100% confidence, but god help your application performance ?

Dougie.
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post #16 of 18
4/12/06 at 9:01pm
The main consideration for RAID5/6 vs RAID 10 is amount and type of write activity. When you have a lot of random writes RAID5/6 might not be able to handle the load. If you don't have a lot of random writes (mostly reads,especially sequential writes) good implementations of RAID5 can be faster then RAID10. In the end it all comes down to how many drives are processing requests.
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post #17 of 18
4/12/06 at 9:02pm
not every company's priorities are the same.... if "cost is not really an option" sure..... go with running ram drives in raid 10 with multiple redundant power sources, at multiple locations (different continents, since we're thinking big). All connected by dedicated (and redundant) fibre optic cables.

Or we could cut back the budget a bit, and actually consider the impact of a 75% increase in the cost of chassis, racks, raid boards, drives, power, cooling, building space, and more over a raid 6 solution. (or an 87.5% increase relative to raid 5)..... I guess it depends on what level of performance and redundancy a company might need for a given application. So just maybe there would be companies who would find the raid 6 solution appealing....

Or maybe all the storage integrators are just wasting millions trying to make raid 6 happen, and no one will ever buy it.... (hope not, or I'm out a job)
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post #18 of 18
4/12/06 at 10:59pm
Not that I'm advocating RAID 5, but if you're not 100% sure of your last backup, you probably need a better disaster recovery solution anyway

P.S. I also really like "cost is not an option" like "failure is not an option". I think it should have been something like "cost is no object". Cost is always an option
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