Now add batteries to run that DL380 when power is out. And 4 post racks and
rail kits and electricity and air conditioning.
I have a pile of older generation DL380 servers that are going to the
recycler because I can't justify the space, power, and battery runtime to
put them back in service. I will say they are beautifully built machines,
the Supermicro boxes are very cheap by comparison, although this isn't
really an issue on the low end servers I'm talking about which are more like
rackmount appliances. I have one DL3xx box still running, but it is at a
data center where space, weight, power and A/C are non issues.
I think using a C2750 based server for VMs would be totally feasible, given
the 8 cores and 32GB of RAM. And you have a low power 1U chassis 10 inches
deep that can go in places other than a data center or server room. The
main drawback would be no hotplug disk drives, but with SSDs, maybe not such
a big deal.
And it's not entirely fair to compare used to new pricing.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Prince
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2015 10:50 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT - 8 core ATOM server
What are you doing with VMs? We bought a few DL380s for between $1200
and $1500, and we run several virtual machines on each one. Cost per
virtual machine is less than $300, and we can make a new one in a few
minutes.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 11/25/2015 8:23 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
I know you may scoff at the idea of a server based on a lowly ATOM chip.
And the idea of paying around $545 for one, plus RAM and HDD.
But I am putting a couple Supermicro 5018A-TN4 servers into service, and
so far I'm pretty impressed with them. I just pop in an 8 GB stick of
DRAM and a 256GB 850 Pro SSD and then load CentOS 7. I think these could
even be used for virtualization, if you don't need hot plug HDD or
hardware RAID, like maybe you have a SAN.
These are in a short depth 1U chassis that easily mounts to a 2 post rack,
no need for a rail kit. The CPU has a passive heatsink, there is a
chassis fan but I suspect everything would be fine if the fan died, the
power consumption seems negligible under normal load. It's as if it
generates zero heat. So with an SSD, there is little to fail, it's
probably down to the power supply. Despite the compact size, nothing
inside is crowded. The chassis seems to be a dedicated design for this
server, not one of their multipurpose chassis. My only complaint is
there's almost no room on the front for any labels, unless you cover up
the logo and serial number.
Some highlights:
2.4 GHz 8 core ATOM C2750 SOC (8 physical cores)
up to 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 ECC SO-DIMM (yes, ECC memory)
2 x 3.5" or 4 x 2.5" HDD bays
4 x GbE interfaces plus IPMI
1 PCI-E slot
Doesn't make much sense as a desktop, definitely a server.
I wondered about the 8 physical cores without hyperthreading support, I
kept thinking that was equivalent to a 4 core CPU with HT. But I did a
little reading, and realized you don't just count virtual cores to
estimate performance, especially if the tasks are computation intensive
not memory intensive.
There is also a 5018A0TN7B model for network security appliance use, based
on the C2758 SOC which includes encryption support. 7xGbE with software
controlled bypass, and up to 64 GB of UDIMM. That's a lot of memory.
