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    Typical virtualization host server config?

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    virtualizationserver
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    • scottalanmillerS
      scottalanmiller
      last edited by

      I think that RAM is still the biggest limiter overall. Although that will start to change with the Windows CPU limits.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • scottalanmillerS
        scottalanmiller
        last edited by

        If running Linux (or any on-Windows system) I see AMD chips doing really well, and big core counts for cheap. In these cases, RAM is definitely the limit rather than licensing.

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        • 1
          1337 @scottalanmiller
          last edited by

          @scottalanmiller said in Typical virtualization host?:

          NICs: 10GigE dominates. Going faster just isn't normally worth the money for the switches.

          Do you use one or two ports or any other config?

          scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • scottalanmillerS
            scottalanmiller
            last edited by

            Oddly, because of this move, Windows starts to look better in cloud (Azure, Vultr, AWS, etc.) than Linux simply because Linux looks so good in colo.

            A single box with big AMD procs and 1TB of RAM might easily run hundreds or even a thousand Linux workloads. At costs that are affordable by many home users!

            But a single box for Windows would cost nearly the same for just sixteen VMs or so.

            So it isn't that cloud is better for Windows than Linux, Linux is still far better in the cloud. But that colo is so much better for non-Windows workloads.

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            • scottalanmillerS
              scottalanmiller @1337
              last edited by

              @Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

              @scottalanmiller said in Typical virtualization host?:

              NICs: 10GigE dominates. Going faster just isn't normally worth the money for the switches.

              Do you use one or two ports or any other config?

              Dual, primarily for redundancy.

              1 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 1
                1337 @scottalanmiller
                last edited by

                @scottalanmiller

                So your typical host config is:

                • CPUs x real cores
                  2x8c or 1x16c

                • RAM
                  256GB

                • Storage
                  SAS SSD RAID or NVMe

                • NICs
                  2x10Gbe

                scottalanmillerS JaredBuschJ 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • scottalanmillerS
                  scottalanmiller
                  last edited by

                  With AMD's Epyc systems you can get 64 cores and 128 threads with up to 4TB of RAM in a relatively small and cheap space. Add to that things like LXC or Docker and the workload density that you can do with Linux becomes astronomic. Now of course, you have to have enough workloads to fill a system like that. Almost no one does. But it shows that the single, affordable box design is now able to accommodate essentially the entire workload of even a pretty large business.

                  You can fit a pretty enormous company into a single box with numbers like that.

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                  • scottalanmillerS
                    scottalanmiller @1337
                    last edited by

                    @Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

                    @scottalanmiller

                    So your typical host config is:

                    • CPUs x real cores
                      2x8c or 1x16c

                    • RAM
                      256GB

                    • Storage
                      SAS SSD RAID or NVMe

                    • NICs
                      2x10Gbe

                    Yeah.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • JaredBuschJ
                      JaredBusch @1337
                      last edited by

                      @Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

                      @scottalanmiller

                      So your typical host config is:

                      • CPUs x real cores
                        2x8c or 1x16c

                      • RAM
                        256GB

                      • Storage
                        SAS SSD RAID or NVMe

                      • NICs
                        2x10Gbe

                      Pretty much what I recommend right now as a general starting point.

                      1 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                      • 1
                        1337 @JaredBusch
                        last edited by 1337

                        @JaredBusch said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

                        @Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

                        @scottalanmiller

                        So your typical host config is:

                        • CPUs x real cores
                          2x8c or 1x16c

                        • RAM
                          256GB

                        • Storage
                          SAS SSD RAID or NVMe

                        • NICs
                          2x10Gbe

                        Pretty much what I recommend right now as a general starting point.

                        The ones we have been setting up have the config below. It's a little short on RAM but we have several of them instead and run linux.

                        We've calculated guesstimated 8GB RAM and 50 GB SSD storage per VM on average.

                        • CPUs x real cores
                          1x10c or 2x10c
                        • RAM
                          64GB (1 CPU), 128GB (2 CPU)
                        • Storage
                          SATA SSD or NVMe
                        • NICs
                          2x1GbE + 10GbE
                        DustinB3403D scottalanmillerS EddieJenningsE 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • DustinB3403D
                          DustinB3403 @1337
                          last edited by

                          @Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

                          guesstimated

                          The trouble here is you may be over-guestimating or under-guestimating.

                          In either case you've either spent more money than you had to, or aren't able to operate without spending more money to fix the mistake.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • scottalanmillerS
                            scottalanmiller @1337
                            last edited by

                            @Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

                            @JaredBusch said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

                            @Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

                            @scottalanmiller

                            So your typical host config is:

                            • CPUs x real cores
                              2x8c or 1x16c

                            • RAM
                              256GB

                            • Storage
                              SAS SSD RAID or NVMe

                            • NICs
                              2x10Gbe

                            Pretty much what I recommend right now as a general starting point.

                            The ones we have been setting up have the config below. It's a little short on RAM but we have several of them instead and run linux.

                            We've calculated guesstimated 8GB RAM and 50 GB SSD storage per VM on average.

                            • CPUs x real cores
                              1x10c or 2x10c
                            • RAM
                              64GB (1 CPU), 128GB (2 CPU)
                            • Storage
                              SATA SSD or NVMe
                            • NICs
                              2x1GbE + 10GbE

                            8GB feels high for an average, but it all depends on your workloads. I think our average is more around 2GB.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • EddieJenningsE
                              EddieJennings @1337
                              last edited by

                              @Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

                              We've calculated guesstimated 8GB RAM and 50 GB SSD storage per VM on average.

                              How did you come up with your guesstimate? Do you have some workloads in production right now that you'd be virtualizing with whatever host your configure and buy?

                              1 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                              • 1
                                1337 @EddieJennings
                                last edited by 1337

                                @EddieJennings said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

                                @Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:

                                We've calculated guesstimated 8GB RAM and 50 GB SSD storage per VM on average.

                                How did you come up with your guesstimate? Do you have some workloads in production right now that you'd be virtualizing with whatever host your configure and buy?

                                Yes, actually we have the hardware now but it hasn't been configured completely yet. We are still figuring things out.

                                The workloads are running on physical servers (Windows) and it's latency that is our primary concern, not capacity. We are moving the applications to linux and making them multi-tenant and horizontally scalable at the same time. So that's why we are guesstimating based on the config of the physical servers.

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