Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers
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@jimmy9008 said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@dashrender said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@jimmy9008 said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Get the best price you can, within reasonable effort - it's a fair expectation from most companies.
Scott bills out at $250+/hr. If it takes him 2 hours to get a quote from Dell they are already $500 in the whole compared to xByte (where he can get a quote from their website in mins).
But it's really hard to believe that you could get an equal price, let alone superior price directly from Dell than you could from xByte, but in the interest of fairness, please post your quote so we can see them side by side.
I have seen HP for example, crush vendor pricing on single laptop/desktop purchases with their sales, but we aren't talking about sales, we're talking about a server purchase.
The purchase was waaaayyyy back. I will try to dig up the details tomorrow.
Yes, Scott would clearly cost far more than myself or others... Probably would be sensible to hand the quote/haggling to more economical employees once the spec an needs are detailed.
Of course, purchasing departments are for this stuff. But only if they understand the end to end service and not just pricing or they sabotage relationships. Have to be careful. It's about ROI, not up front pricing. Dell will drop pricing one time to get you to sabotage your relationships, and then gouge you when you aren't paying attention or can't get the preferred pricing any longer. Good, loyal customers get discounts that "shop around" customers can't get.
But even a purchasing agent isn't free. Let's say you hire someone in a purchasing role. After taxes they will be $50/hr minimum. They won't be as fast as an IT manager, either. So figure three hours minimum to do a deal like this. That's $150 that you are adding to the cost of any solution, always. So take the lowest cost deal and add $150. Now, considering that Dell is only the lowest some tiny percentage of the time, you are adding $150 every time, even when Dell isn't the lowest. This adds up quickly. You can end up accidentally paying a lot more overall because your purchasing process got expensive. Suddenly you are paying intermediary staff to do purchasing and not getting the best deals from your vendors due to either a lack of overall volume or the "shop around" penalty getting applied. I can't buy enough servers to overcome that overhead in the SMB market.
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I'm uncertain about which RAID controller to go with. These are the three to choose from:
- PERC H310 Mini Mono Controller
- PERC H710 Controller with 512MB NV Cache
- PERC H710P Controller with 1GB NV Cache
I'm not sure there would actually be any significant benefit in getting the 1GB NV card vs the Mini Mono...
Here's the build I'm considering now:
Dell PowerEdge R520 8x3.5 2U Rack Server (1 CPU Version) w/xByte Warranty
Intel Xeon E5-2407v2 2.4GHz/10M/1333MHz 4-Core 80W
Dell PE R520/R320 Heat Sink
Dell 4GB DDR3 ECC Reg (3)
PERC H310 Mini Mono Controller (RAID 0/1/5/10/50)
RAID 10
6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS Hard Drive (Dell Enterprise) (8)
Broadcom 5720 Quad Port Gigabit Ethernet
iDRAC7 Enterprise
Dell 2U Sliding Ready Rails
2x Dell 750W Power Supply
Windows Svr 2012 R2 Standard x64 English
3 Year Limited WarrantyShould I consider upgrading to the 1100W PSUs for an additional $60?
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
I'm uncertain about which RAID controller to go with. These are the three to choose from:
- PERC H310 Mini Mono Controller
- PERC H710 Controller with 512MB NV Cache
- PERC H710P Controller with 1GB NV Cache
I'm not sure there would actually be any significant benefit in getting the 1GB NV card vs the Mini Mono...
Page 9.
Looks like the H310 doesn't have an NV cache, battery, and supports less RAID levels. The cache makes things way faster and adds life to your drives.
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
I'm uncertain about which RAID controller to go with. These are the three to choose from:
- PERC H310 Mini Mono Controller
- PERC H710 Controller with 512MB NV Cache
- PERC H710P Controller with 1GB NV Cache
I'm not sure there would actually be any significant benefit in getting the 1GB NV card vs the Mini Mono...
Cache can make a significant performance difference. The difference between 512 and 1 GB, that probably depends on your work load.
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Thanks for the quick replies guys! I'll just have to make sure I have it properly enabled once the server is deployed :D.
Check out my recent spec list too (I updated my previous post).
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Should I consider upgrading to the 1100W PSUs for an additional $60?
I think the 750s are even a bit high.
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@tim_g said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Should I consider upgrading to the 1100W PSUs for an additional $60?
I think the 750s are even a bit high.
I don't know what the power draw specs of your items are - You should look them all up and see what it actually takes to run your configuration, then size your PSU based on that.
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Windows Svr 2012 R2 Standard x64 English
Why such an old OS?
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@dashrender LOL, that's an upgrade for us! We're still running Server 2008 R2 on almost every server in our fleet!
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@dashrender LOL, that's an upgrade for us! We're still running Server 2008 R2 on almost every server in our fleet!
That's fine, but if you are upgrading - skip the 2012's and go directly to 2016. It's already a year old. It's clear your company doesn't upgrade often, no point in being 5 years behind already.
In fact, I'd wait, 2016 R2 is currently in beta. Don't buy and wait for it to come out if possible, that way you can get the most value for your purchase.
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Dangit! The sales guy at xByte said "We don't have any 520 servers in stock, and I don't think we'll be getting any - we haven't had any in several months. They were not mass produced like the 720s were..."
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Dangit! The sales guy at xByte said "We don't have any 520 servers in stock, and I don't think we'll be getting any - we haven't had any in several months. They were not mass produced like the 720s were..."
Then get the same build, but in a 620 or possibly 420. I'm sure the price difference is minimal, maybe even less. Actually I'm not sure if those servers will allow that drive configuration. I can't remember without looking.
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@tim_g said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Then get the same build, but in a 620 or possibly 420. I'm sure the price difference is minimal, maybe even less. Actually I'm not sure if those servers will allow that drive configuration.
Sadly, that assumption is way off... I just spec'd out a 720 with the exact same options and the price comes to $7,975 ($2400 more than the 520 server!)
Wait... did you change your post, lol!? I swear your first post said "720" not "620" or "420"... By the way, we need 2U... The 420 and 620 don't exist in 2U...
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@tim_g said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Then get the same build, but in a 620 or possibly 420. I'm sure the price difference is minimal, maybe even less. Actually I'm not sure if those servers will allow that drive configuration.
Sadly, that assumption is way off... I just spec'd out a 720 with the exact same options and the price comes to $7,975 ($2400 more than the 520 server!)
Wait... did you change your post, lol!? I swear your first post said "720" not "620" or "420"... By the way, we need 2U... The 420 and 620 don't exist in 2U...
Any reason to need 2U? Just the drive configuration? Or was there something else?
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@coliver said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Any reason to need 2U? Just the drive configuration? Or was there something else?
Main reason is storage. We need at least 18TB usable, and we want it in the 3.5" form factor.
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@coliver said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Any reason to need 2U? Just the drive configuration? Or was there something else?
Main reason is storage. We need at least 18TB usable, and we want it in the 3.5" form factor.
Why does storage form factor matter?
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@dashrender said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Why does storage form factor matter?
Eight 6TB drives is cheaper than trying to build out 18TB of usable storage with the 2.5" drives...
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@dashrender said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Why does storage form factor matter?
Eight 6TB drives is cheaper than trying to build out 18TB of usable storage with the 2.5" drives...
OK, so it's not that you care about form factor, it's that you care about cost.
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@dashrender said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
OK, so it's not that you care about form factor, it's that you care about cost.
How 'bout we say that I "care about form factor because of cost..." ?
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@dashrender said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
OK, so it's not that you care about form factor, it's that you care about cost.
How 'bout we say that I "care about form factor because of cost..." ?
Well I would agree, you have to chose the literal best fiscally viable option that meets the requirements. If LFF drives come in cheaper, even by a little, while meeting every other requirement (IOPS) then what does it matter that the drives aren't SFF?
It's cheaper and performs the same or better. If it cost the same and performed worse than you would have something to stand on.
