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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
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    33

    Hardware Recommendations for a high-end database server

    I’m looking to upgrade my current Dell database server which is powered by dual X5355 @ 2.66GH processors and was looking for recommendation for new hardware. My budget is in the $5 to $10K range. I’ve always used Dell Hardware and have a comfort level with Dell, but I really want the best bang for the $$

    I’m looking at the following:

    A PowerEdge T610 Tower Server as follows for about $8k:
    Processor: Intel Xeon Processor X5667 (12 Cache, 3.06 GHz, 6.40 GT/s)
    Additional Processor: Intel Xeon Processor X5667 (12M Cache, 3.06 GHz, 6.40 GT/s)
    1 TB SATA II Hard Drive (7200RPM) [QTY : 8]
    64 GB Memory

    Or a PowerEdge R900 as follows for about $8.5k:
    PowerEdge R900 Rack Server: 2x Quad Core E7330 Xeon, 2.4GHz, 6M Cache, 80W, 1066Mhz FSB
    Additional Processor: Four Quad Core E7330 Xeon, 2.4GHz, 6M Cache, 80W, 1066Mhz FSB
    450 GB Serial-Attach SCSI 6Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive (15K RPM) [QTY : 4]
    64 GB Memory

    Any suggestions and/or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

    Regards,
    -WebManagerNY

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Posts
    402
    Stay far away from the SATA drives. Especially at 7200RPM, that will be a huge bottleneck.

    That said, there really is no one-size fits all database server. The types or reads/writes you do, ratio of reads/writes, etc all come into play.

    Making one huge server also might have issues depending on your config. We're impressed with some of the newer clustering.

    MySQL.com has some really good webcasts and white papers on optimization. Based on the sample specs, I assume you could benefit from reading over some of them.
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  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2006
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    If you could get a pile of SSD's, go for it. If budget doesn't allow, go SAS. Lots of em.
    AS395558

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
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    Chicago
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    We definitely need more info. What software are you running, which OS, what kind of data are you storing, how many transactions per second, etc.

    General rule of thumb though is lots of ram and stay away from SATA drives. SSDs or SAS is the only way to go.

  5. #5
    For around $6-7k on ebay you can get a dell R series with 2x Xeon 5670s, 32-64GB RAM, and 4x 600GB 15K SAS drives.

    Whatever you choose just stay away from SATAs.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
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    If your going with SSD... go with the new 6G/s/sata3 drives. With SSD you will peg your throughput the bigger the throughput the better the data transfer rates = happy servers
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  7. #7
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    Feb 2011
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    Get many 2.5" SAS drives rather than fewer 3.5" SAS drives.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
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    45
    SSD's all the way...!! forget traditional drives...

  9. #9
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    Feb 2011
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    607
    Quote Originally Posted by Yosi View Post
    SSD's all the way...!! forget traditional drives...
    That depends on the size of the database.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
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    Kauai, Hawaii
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    How many GB or TB of storage do you require?

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
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    33
    Thanks for the feedback so far. My current configuration is as follows:

    2x Intel X5355 Xeon Processor Quad-Core 2.66GHz 1333MHz FSB
    10K SAS 2.5" Hot Swap Drives
    Windows Server 2008 x64,
    SQL Server 2008
    Primary Database Size is 80 Gig, with little growth as we archive regularly

    The database function is being used as an inventory repository as well as to facilitate post-order fulfillment. Meaning, we load in thousands of inventory files from suppliers on a daily basis. The loading process only take 30 seconds (or so) per supplier, in which the process is transaction heavy. We sanitize each supplier inventory file against our master catalog, then load in only the relevant inventory changes. All inventory writes are performed as part of a transaction. The process seems to be fairly optimized as we very rarely encounter a deadlock.

    However, I've recently noticed during period of high utilization, in which we are concurrently loading in 20+ inventory files, the DB CPU is spiking to 100% for a minute or so

    -WebManagerNY

  12. #12
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    SSD is certainly faster for MySQL than any spinning disk. It looks like your dataset is small enough to make it affordable too. I would look into 4x 100-160GB SSD RAID10, you probably won't benefit from the RAID10 vs RAID1 but the RAID10 will give you a bit more redundancy and double the disk space.

    I'd suggest:
    Dual Xeon 5620 (or whatever you want, 5620 is a nice price/performance)
    64GB DDR-3 ECC RAM
    Supermicro board (with IPMI/KVM integrated)
    4x SSD (I'd be happy with the X25-M, but upgrade to X25-E if you'll sleep better)

    With the X25-M expect to pay somewhere around $3,000 with the X25-E expect to pay approx $6,000. There are many reputable vendors on these boards, however if you need the DELL onsite warranty stick with DELL.

  13. #13
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    4X SSD would suffice, I'd say.. but if you can budget for 8.. do it. It'll blow your mind.
    AS395558

  14. #14
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    Jan 2010
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    Colorado
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    I'd opt for something with X5600 series CPUs (six core), and a memory configuration optimized for 1333 MHz (12, 24, 48GB, etc). SSD storage for sure if your budget allows. If not, a bunch of 2.5" 15K SAS drives and a controller with 1GB cache. I know Dell and HP both offer flash or NVRAM on their controllers nowadays, and they aren't much more expensive than their battery backed counterparts.

    We've gone through a bunch of upgrades like you describe over the past 9 months or so - from HP and Dell boxes with X5300 CPUs to Westmere-based servers. We've been very happy with the results thus far.

    Just say no to SATA.

  15. #15
    Did you consider installing 96Gb of RAM, and caching the whole database? Then you would not care about the speed of the hard drives.

    12 RAM sticks of (8Gb 800MHz DDR3 ECC Registered) = 96Mb RAM ~ $7200. That's a bit above your budget.


    Also, why Xeon X5667? Why not a X5686 (better value for money, newer CPU), or even better - a hexa-core X5690? You task is most probably very parallelizable, and would benefit from the extra cores.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
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    Quote Originally Posted by OneLittleBird View Post
    Did you consider installing 96Gb of RAM, and caching the whole database? Then you would not care about the speed of the hard drives.

    12 RAM sticks of (8Gb 800MHz DDR3 ECC Registered) = 96Mb RAM ~ $7200. That's a bit above your budget.

    I would not recommend this. In case of a disaster of a crash or if the UPS/Generators don't work you will lose tons of data in the cache. SSDs is the way to go.

    I run a very intensive database on 5 Intel X25M - 160 GB drives, controlled by a LSI Controller with battery backup. It processes about 800,000 IOps..thats super fast! Its been running 24/7 for almost two years now without a hickup. 4 Drives in a RAID 5 config and 1 hot spare. The hotspare never kicked in as of yet. LSI recommended this config and stressed tested it. Works great in my environment.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by gordonrp View Post
    4x SSD (I'd be happy with the X25-M, but upgrade to X25-E if you'll sleep better)
    For anything new, I'd use the Intel 320, which replaces the X25-M. It also has a number of features that make it more suitable in a server. The wholesale pricing on the 120GB version is only $209. It goes from 40GB ($89) up to 600GB ($1069).

    http://newsroom.intel.com/community/...ive-320-series
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  18. #18
    RAM is _much_ faster than any SSD.

    RAID controller might fail as well just like anything else. And its battery might fail just like any UPS.

    Obviously, RAM cache needs to be synchronized with the hard drives continuously. And there should be some transactional mechanism in place, too.

    I am not saying that my proposal is always better than yours. But in some situations it is better.

  19. #19
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    As you want to go with 64 GB RAM, You have to use 64 Bit software as well in the server to utilize maximum RAM.

  20. #20
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    But if you're going to remain ACID compliant when running in RAM then you're going to have to wait till the data is committed to hard disk before you can return from the write ergo you may as well just use SSD in the first place
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  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by KDAWebServices View Post
    But if you're going to remain ACID compliant when running in RAM then you're going to have to wait till the data is committed to hard disk before you can return from the write ergo you may as well just use SSD in the first place
    it may still be much faster, depending on the specific application (unless it is very trivial)

  22. #22
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    Aug 2008
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    For my Dell 1955 blade, I'm thinking about replacing my current 147GB SAS 10K 2.5" HD's with a pair of 300 Gig Intel 320 SSDs.

    Anyone know if the Embedded Raid SAS 5I controller will allow these SSD drives to run in a standard RAID 1 config like my current pair of SAS drives?

    -WebManagerNY

  23. #23
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    If you've got a lot of writes and you need to make sure data is committed then it will never be faster for the writes to hold in memory and then wait till it is committed to another storage medium compared to just using that storage medium alone.

    As for 96GB RAM being $7200 only if you're getting ripped off. Should be less than $2k.
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  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by KDAWebServices View Post
    If you've got a lot of writes and you need to make sure data is committed then it will never be faster for the writes to hold in memory and then wait till it is committed to another storage medium compared to just using that storage medium alone.
    That's not quite accurate. Generally inmemory databases use a very different mechanism for writing data to disk than database engines designed around disk-based storage. Take MySQL for instance, and inmemory MySQL Cluster tables vs. any of the other disk-based storage engines (MyISAM, InnoDB, etc.). Using inmemory tables, MySQL Cluster writes out and appends a redo log to disk and then checkpoints that every 2 seconds (by default). Since writing these logs and checkpoints is sequential with little random access involved (unlike the disk-based storage engines), you'll find that--on the same hardware--you'll be able to achieve higher write throughput with the inmemory database.
    Last edited by lockbull; 04-04-2011 at 06:23 PM. Reason: Typo

  25. #25
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
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    I run a very intensive database on 5 Intel X25M - 160 GB drives, controlled by a LSI Controller with battery backup. It processes about 800,000 IOps..thats super fast! Its been running 24/7 for almost two years now without a hickup. 4 Drives in a RAID 5 config and 1 hot spare. The hotspare never kicked in as of yet. LSI recommended this config and stressed tested it. Works great in my environment
    Curious as to which operating system, and server hardware you are using?

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