Typical virtualization host server config?
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I'm trying to figure out what the current virtualization host server config looks like in 2019.
So this question is for you guys that are running virtualization hosts in production (colo, on-prem etc).Everything is different of course, but if you would take a guess - what is the typical host config in your setup?
- CPUs x real cores
- RAM
- Storage
- NICs
Also what resource limit do you most often run into - is it RAM, CPU, storage or network bandwidth?
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CPU... if we are running Windows workloads (and we usually are), we see the dual octo-core or single 16-core chips dominating. They are screaming fast and can handle a huge workload at the minimum price.
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RAM, seems like 256GB is the starting point now.
Storage: Either SSD SAS drives in RAID 5/6 or NVMe.
NICs: 10GigE dominates. Going faster just isn't normally worth the money for the switches.
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I think that RAM is still the biggest limiter overall. Although that will start to change with the Windows CPU limits.
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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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@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?
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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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@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.
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So your typical host config is:
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CPUs x real cores
2x8c or 1x16c -
RAM
256GB -
Storage
SAS SSD RAID or NVMe -
NICs
2x10Gbe
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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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@Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:
So your typical host config is:
-
CPUs x real cores
2x8c or 1x16c -
RAM
256GB -
Storage
SAS SSD RAID or NVMe -
NICs
2x10Gbe
Yeah.
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@Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:
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.
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@JaredBusch said in Typical virtualization host server config?:
@Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:
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
calculatedguesstimated 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
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@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.
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@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?:
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
calculatedguesstimated 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.
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@Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:
We've
calculatedguesstimated 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?
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@EddieJennings said in Typical virtualization host server config?:
@Pete-S said in Typical virtualization host server config?:
We've
calculatedguesstimated 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.
