@Dashrender - VMware Production support coverage is what I have.

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

My question is - do you have actual HA because you have two servers?

No, just having 2 servers doesn't mean it is HA.

LOL - so - do you have HA? or do you just have two servers cause of the 'eggs in one basket' thinking?

I did have VCSA when that was a thing. It was discontinued and due to storage constraints, we had to move away from that. I am looking to do starwind on these though.

What are you using for the HA setup? VMWare?

I do use vmware for hypervisor and vcenter server, but doesn't starwind do HA?

They do. Or a portion of it, technically. Requires both Starwind and VMware together to make it work in that situation.

Move away from VMware and you get HA at the platform layer for free.

Hmmm. What vmware tier do you have to have for that to function?

At a minimum, Essentials Plus. Not sure if more is needed or not. Lacking basic features like HA without paying huge premiums is one of the biggest reasons to avoid VMware. Their tech is great, but all the important bits that are great are unaffordable. You don't even get support until you get to the expensive tiers!

Cool. Already have Essentials Plus. Support for 6 sockets is about a grand a year. Maybe a tiny bit more.

Edit. Just looked up the invoice for this year - $1109, includes support.

What does support mean in this case - as in you can make several support calls a year? or simply the ability to call in and pay for support when you do?

I figured $1109 would be for software maintenance - i.e. updates to new versions yearly, but no actual support - that you'd have to pay additional for (think MS Windows Server).

I have called in and never had to pay anything extra for support cases.

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

Edit. Just looked up the invoice for this year - $1109, includes support.

It's not horrific, but $555 per host per year is a lot of money compared to free with everyone else. So perspective. Not a ton of money on one hand, but infinitely more than the alternative.

Sorry, I really like Veeam. When Veeam starts supporting KVM at the hypervisor level, I can ditch VMware. That, or, when everything moves to the cloud.

Hyper-V is also completely free, and supported by Veeam.

Yes. But, it is also a MS product. I am gradually moving away from MS as much as I can. At least, at the server level.

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

Edit. Just looked up the invoice for this year - $1109, includes support.

It's not horrific, but $555 per host per year is a lot of money compared to free with everyone else. So perspective. Not a ton of money on one hand, but infinitely more than the alternative.

Sorry, I really like Veeam. When Veeam starts supporting KVM at the hypervisor level, I can ditch VMware. That, or, when everything moves to the cloud.

Well, I will show my boss (CFO) the costs and he can decide what he wants to do.

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@JaredBusch said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

We do 1000s of shipments from Amazon proper and for Amazon marketplace. If we don't ship on time, we lose prime badging and lower reviews. That equates to eventual loss of sales and even being shutdown by Amazon.

What kind of window of flexibility do you have? Minutes, hours, half a day?

Probably hours. Again, I am ball-parking based on my 9-year experience with the company.

Hours means no need for anything more than 4 hours same day response time from Dell.

Several years ago, I experienced Dell being out of stock of something and 4-hrs turned into next afternoon. How often does that happen?

Super rare. Never seen it happen. At least not without a comparable part being available.

That's good to know.

@JaredBusch said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

We do 1000s of shipments from Amazon proper and for Amazon marketplace. If we don't ship on time, we lose prime badging and lower reviews. That equates to eventual loss of sales and even being shutdown by Amazon.

What kind of window of flexibility do you have? Minutes, hours, half a day?

Probably hours. Again, I am ball-parking based on my 9-year experience with the company.

Hours means no need for anything more than 4 hours same day response time from Dell.

Several years ago, I experienced Dell being out of stock of something and 4-hrs turned into next afternoon. How often does that happen?

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

My question is - do you have actual HA because you have two servers?

No, just having 2 servers doesn't mean it is HA.

LOL - so - do you have HA? or do you just have two servers cause of the 'eggs in one basket' thinking?

I did have VCSA when that was a thing. It was discontinued and due to storage constraints, we had to move away from that. I am looking to do starwind on these though.

What are you using for the HA setup? VMWare?

I do use vmware for hypervisor and vcenter server, but doesn't starwind do HA?

They do. Or a portion of it, technically. Requires both Starwind and VMware together to make it work in that situation.

Move away from VMware and you get HA at the platform layer for free.

Hmmm. What vmware tier do you have to have for that to function?

At a minimum, Essentials Plus. Not sure if more is needed or not. Lacking basic features like HA without paying huge premiums is one of the biggest reasons to avoid VMware. Their tech is great, but all the important bits that are great are unaffordable. You don't even get support until you get to the expensive tiers!

Cool. Already have Essentials Plus. Support for 6 sockets is about a grand a year. Maybe a tiny bit more.

Edit. Just looked up the invoice for this year - $1109, includes support.

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

We do 1000s of shipments from Amazon proper and for Amazon marketplace. If we don't ship on time, we lose prime badging and lower reviews. That equates to eventual loss of sales and even being shutdown by Amazon.

What kind of window of flexibility do you have? Minutes, hours, half a day?

Probably hours. Again, I am ball-parking based on my 9-year experience with the company.

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

My question is - do you have actual HA because you have two servers?

No, just having 2 servers doesn't mean it is HA.

LOL - so - do you have HA? or do you just have two servers cause of the 'eggs in one basket' thinking?

I did have VCSA when that was a thing. It was discontinued and due to storage constraints, we had to move away from that. I am looking to do starwind on these though.

What are you using for the HA setup? VMWare?

I do use vmware for hypervisor and vcenter server, but doesn't starwind do HA?

They do. Or a portion of it, technically. Requires both Starwind and VMware together to make it work in that situation.

Move away from VMware and you get HA at the platform layer for free.

Hmmm. What vmware tier do you have to have for that to function?

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

My question is - do you have actual HA because you have two servers?

No, just having 2 servers doesn't mean it is HA.

LOL - so - do you have HA? or do you just have two servers cause of the 'eggs in one basket' thinking?

I did have VCSA when that was a thing. It was discontinued and due to storage constraints, we had to move away from that. I am looking to do starwind on these though.

What are you using for the HA setup? VMWare?

I do use vmware for hypervisor and vcenter server, but doesn't starwind do HA?

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

My question is - do you have actual HA because you have two servers?

No, just having 2 servers doesn't mean it is HA.

LOL - so - do you have HA? or do you just have two servers cause of the 'eggs in one basket' thinking?

I did have VCSA when that was a thing. It was discontinued and due to storage constraints, we had to move away from that. I am looking to do starwind on these though.

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

My question is - do you have actual HA because you have two servers?

No, just having 2 servers doesn't mean it is HA.

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

Order processing will stop completely. If no one has access to the ERP and other LOB apps we use, they can't do much of anything.

Sure, but what does that really cost you? I've worked in a lot of factories and even at IBM this would have cost us almost nothing... because over the course of a few days or maybe a couple weeks we'd just run slightly faster and catch up.

A single server outage is rarely more than a few hours, maybe a day at most. A second server, HA or just a second server, is to reduce that time from "several hours" to "minutes or maybe an hour tops." The average outage that HA protects against is actually just a few minutes. Full outages, like from total hardware failure, are crazy rare and if you are in a major city, part swaps are normally just a few hours.

Add on to that the risk that the HA system itself might cause an outage and it gets harder to justify.

We do 1000s of shipments from Amazon proper and for Amazon marketplace. If we don't ship on time, we lose prime badging and lower reviews. That equates to eventual loss of sales and even being shutdown by Amazon.

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

If we don't have any of our servers running, no one can do any work except for chat and email. I don't have the exact cost, but I can say that it is expensive.

Try ballparking it. And ballpark the cost of the second server with all of the setup, risks, and licensing.

Downtown is usually shockingly cheap. Like, often 1-5% as much as people think that it is. Especially when things like chat and email keep working! Those are the core apps.

What functions stop in the first five minutes, hour, day if the server goes down?

Order processing will stop completely. If no one has access to the ERP and other LOB apps we use, they can't do much of anything.

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

Well, since this is production, yes, we do need 2.

You might need two. But being production wouldn't tell us that. Only HA environments needs two. And that's super rare.

If we don't have any of our servers running, no one can do any work except for chat and email. I don't have the exact cost, but I can say that it is expensive.

I am building out a new R740XD and am curious what the IOPS would be for a mix use 2.5" SAS SSD. Specifically, this one -
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-800gb-ssd-sas-mix-use-12gbps-512e-25in-hot-plug-drive-pm1645/apd/400-azii/storage-drives-media#polaris-pd

Is there a standard ball-park number to assign to SSDs?

@jmoore said in Laptop setup - multiple monitors, etc - suggestions?:

@wrx7m said in Laptop setup - multiple monitors, etc - suggestions?:

I have had some issues with external monitors losing signal and basically going back and forth every second.

I've also had this exact issue.

Glad it isn't just me.

@scotth said in Laptop setup - multiple monitors, etc - suggestions?:

I haven't checked,.... does DP do 4k?
My brother wants to do a home build and he has a 4k projector.

Yes. His 4K projector uses DP?
https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/feature/digital-home/displayport-vs-hdmi-3535257/

@Dashrender said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@wrx7m said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

@Pete-S said in Comparing Server CPU Capabilities?:

To keep the actual performance of the VMs the same but run 3-4 times as many VMs, you would also need the same increase in storage and in network performance. That is quite possible if you are also moving from spinning disks to ssd and perhaps from 1GbE to 10GbE on the hypervisors. You also need 3-4 times as much RAM of course.
Depending on what you are upgrading I'd say the conservative number is you will get twice the capacity and the optimistic number is that you have four times the capacity.

Thanks. The majority of workloads will be moved to SSD, with the file servers running on spinning disks. I already have 2 10Gig for VMs and 2 for vmotion, per server. That is a good point about the RAM. Current RAM utilization is a bit constrained. Each server only has 128GB. I am looking at 320 GB. This will allow for some growth and also running all VMs on a single host if necessary.

I'm really wondering if you have a need for two host right off the git go.

Scott's comment about buying more than you need for today is something to seriously consider.

Well, since this is production, yes, we do need 2.