Question

Hardware / CPU performance comparison between HP PA-RISC & Sun Sparc servers for virtualization

Asked by: sunhux

Hi

I'm contemplating to virtualize
a)1x Prod  Sun  E450 (with 4Gb RAM
b)1x Uat Sun E250 (with 512Gb RAM
c)1x Uat Sun V880 (with 8Gb RAM)
d)1x HP PA RISC RP7410 (with 4Gb RAM)
e)1x HP PA RISC RP2470 (with 4Gb RAM)

The average working day CPU utilization for  a, b, c, e are rarely
above 15% while for d, it's about 40%.

I plan to virtualize all the above 5 into on Sun T5240 with 32 Gb RAM
(disk space, no issue as this T5240 can house  16x 300Gb SAS disks )
as Solaris virtualization ( container ) is free of charge.

For d & e, the application vendor will port the application (oracle, Filenet)
to the Solaris platform.

Q1:
Can anyone give me a site or comparison of the above servers CPU
performance?

Q2:
If T5240's CPU is insufficient say 4-5 yrs down the road, is it simple to
just upgrade it's CPU/ motherboard ?

Q3:
Btw, can Solaris (not Solaris X86) virtualization host a Linux VM client?  

Q4:
Any other considerations?
I know T5240 comes with 4x Gigabit NIC ports so no issue with network
performance

Q5:
Can Solaris 10 virtualization increase/decrease the CPU resource on the
fly, say on a particular day, Uat servers are not being used, I can allocate
more CPU resource to the Prod servers?

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Asked On
2009-08-07 at 22:09:51ID24636602
Topics

HP-UX Unix

,

Sun Solaris

Participating Experts
3
Points
390
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: javeedabdulPosted on 2009-08-08 at 07:44:26ID: 25050051


Q1:
Can anyone give me a site or comparison of the above servers CPU
performance?
http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t5240/performance.xml

Q2:
If T5240's CPU is insufficient say 4-5 yrs down the road, is it simple to
just upgrade it's CPU/ motherboard ?
yes

Q3:
Btw, can Solaris (not Solaris X86) virtualization host a Linux VM client?  
look at this
virtualbox.org

Q4:
Any other considerations?
I know T5240 comes with 4x Gigabit NIC ports so no issue with network
performance
you add extra network card. and look for ipmp configuration on solaris


Q5:
Can Solaris 10 virtualization increase/decrease the CPU resource on the
fly, say on a particular day, Uat servers are not being used, I can allocate
more CPU resource to the Prod servers?


zone
ldoms
vmware
virtualbox.
depends on what you have selected to proceed


 

by: sunhuxPosted on 2009-08-09 at 02:35:52ID: 25053459


If I choose Solaris 10's LDOMs, can it do microPartitioning ie slicing of CPU / memory
(allocating of CPU / memory resource to the VM clients on the fly )

 

by: RowleyPosted on 2009-08-09 at 10:13:39ID: 25054900

My two-pennies worth:

q2: Generally speaking, you'd be better off migrating to a new server if you're talking anything over three years.
q3: http://opensolaris.org/os/community/xen/
q5: For ldoms, you can dynamically allocate cpu but not memory. Containers are more flexible.

 

by: bluPosted on 2009-08-10 at 04:52:46ID: 25059013

Q2: While the motherboard is modular, the only versions available are 4-8 core, which doesn't provide for much upgrade room. If you are already getting the 8-core, there is nowhere to go. It is unlikely that in 4-5 years there will be an upgrade option that will help you much. More likely you would want to get a new system and move half of your virtual systems to the second physical one.

Q3: Most virtualization technologies can only virtualize systems with the same architectures as the physical system. So, unless you were using a Sparc version of Linux, you could not virtualize a Linux system on the T5420.

Q5: Rowley is correct. Containers have pretty much full dynamic control over the allocation of resources. LDOMS are pretty static in this regard, requiring the allocation of resources at the time of creation of the virtual machine.

 

by: sunhuxPosted on 2009-08-11 at 04:56:34ID: 25067969

Thanks chaps.

Anyone know of any website that would give me independent ratings
(say SPEC)  which specifically give me ratings for :
1)Sparc T5240
2)Sparc E450
3)HP PA RISC RP7410
4)HP PA RISC RP2470

If there's no such website, kindly point to individual website that give
the SPEC rating for each of the above.  Thanks

 

by: RowleyPosted on 2009-08-11 at 06:25:25ID: 25068716

for server in T5240 T5240 RP7410 RP7410; do
    google "$server review"
    google "$server benchmark"
done

:)

Reviews are subjective anyway and hardly ever meet anyone's criteria. Get in touch with some resellers and arrange a trial of the T5240 - http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy/applyonline.jsp?country=US&puuid=b057c0d5-f740-11db-8c3c-080020a9ed93&product_type=1&ws=true

Can't help with the hp stuff, sorry.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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