SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check
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I would recommend slimming down the core count on your Processors, Microsoft licensing is going to burn you here with that many cores, as you have to buy a minimum of 16 (but you'll end up purchasing 20 per host).
If you can get away with a 8-core CPU (odds are you really can) you can save some money here.
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@dustin did you invite @beta over for this here already?
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@scottalanmiller said in SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check:
@dustin did you invite @beta over for this here already?
Yes.
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@scottalanmiller yes I just joined xD
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@beta said in SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check:
@scottalanmiller yes I just joined xD
Welcome to the community!
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@DustinB3403 said in SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check:
- Dell R630 - 10 2.5'' drive bay chassis - I normally buy 2U servers for the drive capacity, but I figured 10 drive bays should be pretty good as I can use RAID 5 now to get better capacity and still have half my drive bays empty in case of future expansion.
I would only do this if you have a strong aversion to the extra 3" of rack space being used and if you are super confident that you would never want large capacity storage. This might not sound limiting now, but it might be very limiting when needs change in two years.
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@beta said in SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check:
@scottalanmiller yes I just joined xD
Awesome. Welcome to the community and I guessed at your username and it worked!
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@scottalanmiller We are already running ESXi, it's what I know and am comfortable with. If this was greenfield project, I'd consider Hyper-V, but that's what we are on now.
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@DustinB3403 It is definitely more than enough for now. I figure in 5 years time, since I have extra drive bays, I can add more disk if needed.
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As for the other hardware specs, I'd say they are perfectly acceptable.
I also have my questions about ESXi in this configuration, but you've already mentioned why you're using it.
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@beta said in SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check:
@DustinB3403 It is definitely more than enough for now. I figure in 5 years time, since I have extra drive bays, I can add more disk if needed.
You can, but only as a separate array, which you'll have to introduce into ESXi.
I try to evaluate my growth over the past 5 years, and determine what that delta is per year. Once I have that (5 year sum) I add 20% for storage.
Makes life simpler.
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@DustinB3403 Yes, I took that into consideration too. I do have in my favor we are a non-profit, so I can get MS licensing from Techsoup which is MUCH cheaper than anywhere else so the updated MS licensing doesn't hurt us too badly.
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@beta said in SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check:
@scottalanmiller We are already running ESXi, it's what I know and am comfortable with. If this was greenfield project, I'd consider Hyper-V, but that's what we are on now.
Gotcha. I would still consider it, it's an expanding cost that you can nip in the bud. Every new hardware purchase is a great trigger for a huge cost savings.
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The generally considered best practice is OBR (one big raid) for the life of the server.
Splitting arrays was never really a good thing to do.
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@beta said in SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check:
@DustinB3403 It is definitely more than enough for now. I figure in 5 years time, since I have extra drive bays, I can add more disk if needed.
Yup, and SSDs will get bigger and cheaper all of the time. But there is something nice about knowing you CAN pop in 10TB HDs as a separate tier, too.
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@beta said in SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check:
@DustinB3403 Yes, I took that into consideration too. I do have in my favor we are a non-profit, so I can get MS licensing from Techsoup which is MUCH cheaper than anywhere else so the updated MS licensing doesn't hurt us too badly.
But it hurts some. Why spend the extra for something that you won't have a true benefit of?
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@DustinB3403 said in SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check:
Splitting arrays was never really a good thing to do.
It was, just before you were in IT.
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/12/the-history-of-array-splitting/
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@DustinB3403 said in SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check:
Dell R630 - 10 2.5'' drive bay chassis - I normally buy 2U servers for the drive capacity, but I figured 10 drive bays should be pretty good as I can use RAID 5 now to get better capacity and still have half my drive bays empty in case of future expansion.
Go for the R720/xd. It's not that much more in the long run and you will be able to upgrade/add storage on demand. It's a really nice system.
2xIntel E5-2640v4 10-core 2.4GHz - This seems to me the best compromise between cores and GHz. I currently have 28 vCPUs provisioned.
You could probably get away with 8-core processors. You may want to look at the total average GHz used (very easy to do with ESXi) over a week or two. This will give you a better understanding of how much actual compute capacity you'll need. Not the best measure of CPU usage but it helps get an idea. Windows licensing (and ESXi) aren't cheap and since they are both done via CPU now you need to be aware of that.
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Have you considered getting another R720 that matches and instead of Veeam replication, using Starwind for a real high availability setup for the same or less money?
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@scottalanmiller I was just about to say that . . .
