Thoughts on hardware for Cloud

ewitte · #1 09-17-2010, 09:32 AM

Still changing stats and have at least 6 months but this is the bulk of what I have in my head now. Just from a hardware standpoint not the logistics.

OnApp
SBE-714D-R42 - Supermicro SuperBlade with 4 power supplies
Hypervisor Servers (undecided quantity) SBI-7126T-T1E 1 E5620 each (can upgrade to two each) / 16-24GB RAM each to begin with

Datastore 1 Supermicro 216 - 12 * SSD RAID6 ADG(hopefully eMLC)
Datastore 2 Supermicro 216 - 12 * SSD RAID6 ADG(hopefully eMLC)
High Availability between DS1 and DS2 - Will add more space as funds become available.

Controllers on Datastores LSI 9261-8i with the battery
Mellanox 40Gbps connection to Hypervisors (picked that specific blade because it comes with 40Gbps)

HostColor · #2 09-17-2010, 09:49 AM

We use Supermicro for our Cloud infrastructure and we are quite happy about their hardware. It is stable and the Superblade technology provides redundancy on a hardware level (cluster interconnect,etc...).

Winky · #3 09-17-2010, 08:56 PM

SSDs are gonna be blazing fast! you will not be disappointed.

brentpresley · #4 09-19-2010, 09:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winky

SSDs are gonna be blazing fast! you will not be disappointed.

Every report, and test, we have seen with SSDs in a server environment has shown them to not be reliable.

Even the best of the breed, Intel X25-E, simply doesn't have enough read-write cycles to stand up to datacenter use for longer than 3-6 months.

vselvara · #5 09-20-2010, 12:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brentpresley

Every report, and test, we have seen with SSDs in a server environment has shown them to not be reliable.

Even the best of the breed, Intel X25-E, simply doesn't have enough read-write cycles to stand up to datacenter use for longer than 3-6 months.

eMLC SSDs are supposed to be much more reliable. It is very new so we'll know for sure in a year.

lostmind · #6 09-20-2010, 12:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brentpresley

Every report, and test, we have seen with SSDs in a server environment has shown them to not be reliable.

Even the best of the breed, Intel X25-E, simply doesn't have enough read-write cycles to stand up to datacenter use for longer than 3-6 months.

Plenty of us using ssd's in heavy write scenarios for much longer than 3-6 months with no problems.

brentpresley · #7 09-20-2010, 08:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lostmind

Plenty of us using ssd's in heavy write scenarios for much longer than 3-6 months with no problems.

Please link me some reviews in this environment.

We discussed this with a couple of cloud software development companies and their testing had very high failure rates.

kris1351 · #8 09-20-2010, 12:08 PM

I have read reports of heat being the number one issue of the SSDs.

**CloudWeb** · #9 09-20-2010, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brentpresley

Please link me some reviews in this environment.

We discussed this with a couple of cloud software development companies and their testing had very high failure rates.

Will have these data points soon. We're doing a nice install with a lot of these...

brentpresley · #10 09-20-2010, 05:26 PM

They can't possibly cost-effective, even if they are reliable.

For every 16 cores and 16-32GB RAM we sell, we need 1-1.5TB of redundant space (2-3TB total).

That would cost us a crap-ton, pardon the expression, with SSDs. Although I could see a few high-dollar customers paying for upgrades like that.

**CloudWeb** · #11 09-20-2010, 05:45 PM

For high-end DB's, they aren't all that bad.

eming · #12 09-20-2010, 07:43 PM

we've actually stopped suggesting them for SAN usage, and if anything you should not go with any sort of mlc's (MLC: 5000 write cycles; eMLC: 30000 write cycles; SLC: 100000 write cycles; eSLC: 300000 write cycles) - stick with SLC's. They are good for non-critical raided SAN acceleration though, like MaxIQ etc.

We've got great experience with the FusionIO's though - they are fantastic.