@mprftw said:
@JohnFromSTL If you'd like to arrange a call, we can go over some of these specs in greater detail to help work out the solution. We here at xByte can definitely help lay some groundwork out for you. I don't see anything about memory requirements for capacity planning yet. Has it been mentioned?
I believe 192 GB to 256 GB would be adequate.
Please feel free to give me a call. I believe Lyndsie has my number in an email. Thank you.
@scottalanmiller said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
Fair enough, they are much cheaper anyways. I'm going to lunch, be back after a while.
Chances are, NL-SAS will be what you want. But you have to see the actual prices to know.
Still running RAID-10 for the best performance?
@scottalanmiller said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
Four servers total, two for redundancy.
Oh.... all running Hyper-V, two as production and two for failover for those two?
Yes sir, that's the plan at least. I'm heading out to get lunch.
Cool, now I follow.
So the next question is.... why Prod/DR failover design instead of just "cluster" design? If you treat them as clusters you can load balance and get better performance "every day" and only go to the limitations of the design in cases where something has failed.
I'm not against it at all; I just haven't set one up before.
@scottalanmiller said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
Four servers total, two for redundancy.
Oh.... all running Hyper-V, two as production and two for failover for those two?
Yes sir, that's the plan at least. I'm heading out to get lunch.
@scottalanmiller said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
I simply haven't used them before.
SATA drives? It's totally transparent to you. SATA is what is in desktops and laptops and nearly any SMB NAS device or SAN device. You'll normally encounter SATA at least ten to one over SAS. But other than the speed difference, they are the same drives. It's literally nothing but an "under the hood" protocol for the drives to talk to the RAID controller. Other than being listed as SATA instead of SAS in the RAID card's interface, you have no way to tell them apart.
Fair enough, they are much cheaper anyways. I'm going to lunch, be back after a while.
@scottalanmiller said:
Four total servers meaning two hosts with four VMs? I'm unclear why there are four hosts.
Four servers total, two for redundancy.
@scottalanmiller said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
I don't feel comfortable using SATA drives in these servers, and I have zero experience with NL SAS drives. Any thoughts on this?
SATA is just a protocol, where are you getting a "concern" from?
NL-SAS is just a trade term for SAS at 7200 RPM, it's not something you have "experience with." It would be like saying you drive the highway regularly but don't have "experience driving at 40 MPH."
There are two types of drives, SAS and SATA. SAS are more efficient at mixed workloads, that is all. The speed of the spindles changes nothing but the speed. You no more need experience on a spindle speed than you do on a CPU frequency.
I simply haven't used them before.
After talking with the boss he is prepared to spend some money on these servers. I've decided to split the VMs between 2 hosts and have a 4 total servers for load balancing/redundancy.
NewHost01
SQL 2005 -----------750GB
SQL 2008 R2 --------750GB
SQL 2012 -----------750GB
SQL 2014 -------------1TB
Oracle 11g ---------750GB
Oracle 12c ---------750GB
Usable Local ------4.75TB
NewHost02
StorageServer (Server 2012 R2) ------2500GB
AppServices01 (Server 2012 R2) -------100GB
AppServices02 (Server 2012 R2) -------100GB
WebServices01 (Server 2012 R2) -------100GB
MSTeamServer01 (Server 2012 R2) ------100GB
ClientVM01 (Windows 10) --------------100GB
ClientVM02 (Windows 10) --------------100GB
ClientVM03 (Windows 10) ---------------80GB
ClientVM04 (Windows 10) ---------------80GB
ClientVM05 (Windows 10) ---------------80GB
ClientVM06 (Windows 7) ----------------80GB
ClientVM07 (Windows 7) ----------------80GB
ClientVM08 (Windows XP) ---------------40GB
ClientVM09 (Windows XP) ---------------40GB
Usable Local Storage ----------------3.58TB
NewHost01 needs to be the more powerful of the two machines. I really like the 730xd for the shear power, but would the 720xd be a better option? I plan on installing Server Core for Windows Server 2012 R2 on two 400GB SAS SSD drives. I'll be using local storage to host the Hyper-V clients. I don't feel comfortable using SATA drives in these servers, and I have zero experience with NL SAS drives. Any thoughts on this? I will have to justify why the cheaper SATA drives aren't a good idea and will just put my foot down if necessary. I'm trying to keep the total under $25k for the four servers. Thanks to all of you for the amazing advice.
@scottalanmiller said:
Why does he have IT if he wants non-IT people doing IT instead? That's just weird. I wouldn't hire a mechanic and then have the receptionist fix the car while the mechanic explains that she doesn't know anything about cars!
This is the same person who takes a $25,000 hit when trading in a car which he paid $100,000 for because the bumper-to-bumper warranty is expired and an oil change costs $250 at the Mercedes dealer. Oh yeah, the car was two years old and had fewer than 10k miles.
@scottalanmiller said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
The developers are afraid of running SQL and Oracle in a virtualized environment because our current VMs are very inefficient.
And developers make infrastructure designs or have input because...... why?
That's like asking a hotel customer what building material to use in the foundation of the building. It's none of his business.
Because the owner trusts them more, developers/programmers spend < 5 minutes looking at results from a Google search and become instant experts and I am the sole IT person who squeezes blood from turnips while keeping things operational and is perceived as only wanting to spend money to buy "new" equipment and will only break things in the process.
@scottalanmiller said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
From my initial conversation with the Dell enterprise sales rep he intimated that "we may disagree on certain issues, but at the end of the day be able to work together to come up with the best solution that fits our needs".
The problem is... that could be true or it could be an example of how high pressure that they are: that they tell you that what they are doing is to find something that fits your needs. This is both what low pressure as well as high pressure would look like.
Did they ask you your needs? The business needs, that is? Or are they only looking at capacity? If they don't do a huge amount of business investigation, why do they know what does or does not suite your needs?
Aside from the initial phone call regarding DPACK I haven't spoke to the Dell rep since 23 October. When I did speak to the rep he didn't spend much time learning about our current\future business needs; he was relying on DPACK to give him any information.
If our developers/programmers had their way our environment would be:
VM 01 - SQL Server 2005 (to be used only for database migrations from 2005 to SQL 20xx)
VM 02 - SQL Server 2008 (to be used only for database migrations from 2008 {some customers installed 2008 instead of waiting for 2008 R2 and the SQL migration tools are very picky} to SQL 20xx)
Physical Server 01 - SQL Server 2008 R2
Physical Server 02 - SQL Server 2012
Physical Server 03 - SQL Server 2014
Physical Server 04 - Oracle 11g
Physical Server 05 - Oracle 12c
SQL Server and Oracle are perfectly capable of running in a Hyper-V environment...provided everything is meticulously planned out in advance.
The developers are afraid of running SQL and Oracle in a virtualized environment because our current VMs are very inefficient. They do not seem to hear me when I say "I agree, our current virtual environment is awful. How do you propose we change the mindset of an owner who believes a high-end desktop is perfectly acceptable to be used as a server?"
It's very difficult to educate someone when they know more than you do about everything and wants you to know that.
@scottalanmiller said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Not if that guy is based in the UK. And why would someone pay for it if Dell provides the results for free?
I don't consider a sales pitch free, And I'm wondering since they went to the efforts of doing this free thing for you, will they put the high pressure on the sales pitch?
That's a good point. My only counter to that is that.... nearly anyone willing to go through the effort of avoiding that sales pitch and using a solution like this to work around it likely will not be swayed by the sales pitch. Maybe I'm wrong, but I am guessing that that is true.
It is a pretty high pressure process, from what I am told.
From my initial conversation with the Dell enterprise sales rep he intimated that "we may disagree on certain issues, but at the end of the day be able to work together to come up with the best solution that fits our needs".
Sure, but in the real world we've talked to literally hundreds of companies that have gone through that process and not one reports ANY variation for the inverted pyramid of doom being shoved down their throats relentlessly even after they've shown that it would be costly and reckless to do so and in no way meets their needs. We've yet to have anyone report back that their rep had ever even asked for the necessary information to begin determining their needs either.
If you want to go through this process and see if you can get a different result, feel free. But so far the reports are 100% that the IPOD is pushed as the only option even when clearly it is the worst one.
@scottalanmiller I must say that folks on this blog have gone out of their way to patiently help me understand the perils of IPOD. I am not even considering implementing this as a possible solution. My only reason for contacting Dell and obtaining DPACK access was to utilize their tools.
Taking into consideration that DPACK revealed my IOPS are not very high, is the 730xd overkill OR is it still the best solution due to the large amount of usable storage I'd have available for my VMs?
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Not if that guy is based in the UK. And why would someone pay for it if Dell provides the results for free?
I don't consider a sales pitch free, And I'm wondering since they went to the efforts of doing this free thing for you, will they put the high pressure on the sales pitch?
That's a good point. My only counter to that is that.... nearly anyone willing to go through the effort of avoiding that sales pitch and using a solution like this to work around it likely will not be swayed by the sales pitch. Maybe I'm wrong, but I am guessing that that is true.
It is a pretty high pressure process, from what I am told.
From my initial conversation with the Dell enterprise sales rep he intimated that "we may disagree on certain issues, but at the end of the day be able to work together to come up with the best solution that fits our needs".
@Dashrender said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
[https://files.secureserver.net/0sxI5pJa5UT5Ux](22_oct_ (17_hr_25_min)-official_report_10_30_2015)
https://files.secureserver.net/0she5PgIAN9ho5 30_oct_[(12_hour)-official_report_10_30_2015]Awesome, thanks for sharing.
Man, you have some IOPs to spare. 95% at 457 IOPs, and a peak of 4165.
Does it make a difference that I didn't select the individual VMs when running the DPACK analysis but selected the Hyper-V hosts instead? Our heavy usage is sporadic. The VMs which give us the most grief are SQL 2005 and Oracle 11g.
@scottalanmiller said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Sure
I've slacked off a bit since having knee surgery this Tuesday.
How are you doing now?
Thanks for asking. I'm doing okay, it's still sore (of course I pushed too far too soon by coming back to work earlier than I should have) but it feels better than it did before the surgery. I had a complex tear in lateral meniscus of my left knee, a cyst on the meniscus due to the tear and Grade IV chondrosis (http://www.cartilagehealth.com/acr.html) of the tibial plateau. I nearly lost my leg in a forklift accident when I was 17. I've had over 40 surgeries as a result of the accident. It's pretty trashed, but at least I can walk. I'm not complaining, there are others who haven't been as fortunate, so I'm grateful for what I can do. I should post pics from the surgery when I return next week for a follow up appointment.
[https://files.secureserver.net/0sxI5pJa5UT5Ux](22_oct_ (17_hr_25_min)-official_report_10_30_2015)
https://files.secureserver.net/0she5PgIAN9ho5 30_oct_[(12_hour)-official_report_10_30_2015]
@scottalanmiller said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
Is DPACK the best tool to use? And would you happen to have a contact name for someone at NTG? I've spoken with someone from Dell but their lousy tool keeps dropping connections to the DPACK Web Service and this gentleman isn't very responsive at all.
Several @ntg people right here in the thread
I have several DPACK results uploaded, should I just post them here?
@ryan-from-xbyte said:
It's good to see this thread with more legs over here on Mango than on SW.
Here is the interesting thing going on with the Dell generations now. We see the 11th gen still popular (R510s and R710s) if you only need 6-core CPUs. If you need 8-cores, then we see people skipping the 12th generation and going on to the 13th generation servers like the R730xd. The newer CPUs are so powerful at the low end and therefore so inexpensive, it is hard to justify other the 12th generation. There are some exceptions if you are okay with E5-2600 version 1 CPUs. That market is crashing and you can find some deals.
This is why we encourage people to call us so we can walk through the options in the secondary market. It is very different than buying directly through Dell.
Thank you @ryan-from-xbyte, can you send me your email so I can get in touch with you?
@Dashrender said:
@JohnFromSTL said:
Is DPACK the best tool to use? And would you happen to have a contact name for someone at NTG? I've spoken with someone from Dell but their lousy tool keeps dropping connections to the DPACK Web Service and this gentleman isn't very responsive at all.
Reach out to either @Minion-Queen or the new client liaison @art_of_shred
I'll do that. Should I contact @Minion-Queen and @art_of_shred via chat or is there another preferred method? Thank you very much.
