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Steven YarmushFlag for United States of America

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Purchase New Server

I am looking to purchase a new server
Speed and longevity are most important; the server MUST last 5 years

The HP Server is model # HP DL380 GEN9

The server will be VM and will host 1 other heavy use program
This server will be a domain controller
File Server
SQL databases
Accounts Payable
Runs program like Virus scan also in a banking environment

I have 2 questions concerning the processor and hard drives

Intel Xeon E5-2650 v3 @ 2.30GHz  
2.3GHz, 10 Core processor with 25MB cache,
VS.

Intel  3.4E5-2643 v3   .3.4GHz, 6 core, 20MB cache.



When you compare them on cpubenchmark.net the lower  MGZ processor is cheaper and preforms better  then the higher one...which I need help understanding


Also the hard drive (there will be 8*300 GB drives

They are  either
8 HP 300GB 6G SAS 10K 2.5IN SC ENT


or


8 HP 300GB 6G SAS 15K 2.5IN SC ENT


This server will be RAID 5 with a total is 32 GB of RAM

Can you help me make this decision
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rindi
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Echo rindi.
You do not leave anything on which to comment cpu/memory is all that you are asking about.

The 5 year sustainability is based not on your cpu nor the speed of the drives, but on how much space your system will grow year over year and how much resources it will need.

Fileserver, DC, are to a large part a low CPU/memory consumer.  Sql on the other hand is a higher memory/IO consumer.

How many VMs are you contemplating? Which Hyper-V or VMWARE

Redundancy and backup is likely as important.

How many users?



Based on the specs outlined and guesstimate of data resource consumption, I think an additional server after two and a half/three years.

I think you should consider a dual multi-core CPU 2U platform with more drive space than you are starting of with to allow for space additions and sufficient memory, not max, but do not get the minimum based on your application requirements.

Possibly 64GB of memory.
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Using VM ware this will make 2 servers
I will take into consideration additional hard drive space and memory
I possibly could raise the drive to 8 x500GB
I am looking at the server I have now and looking at what growth will be in 5 yrs.
Yes this server will be backed-up off site
less then 50 users
The DC located on this server will replicate to the other DC at another location

These are the 2 issues I would like you to comment on since  I fully understand the others and have a budget to deal with...
Tendency and preference I would not go for sata drives nor near-line Sas drives.

I believe it is recommended to have at least two Dc's in each location.

I believed I echoed rindi' and added what/how ... But to be clear,

Access on both drives is similar compensated through the cache. As long as the controller has 1gb or more memory and battery backup.

As to CPU if only one CPU I think I too would go with the 10 core Xeon e5-2650
I am sorry I did not make it clear the server will have 2 of the processors


1st Processor HP DL380 Gen9 E5-2643v3 Kit , 3400 MHZ
2nd Processor HP DL380 Gen9 E5-2643v3 Kit , 3400 MHZ
or 2 of the Intel Xeon E5-2650 v3 @ 2.30GHz

So does that make this 20 cores? \10 for each processor?

I should have added that when you asked
In the 2x6 core 3.4 with hyper threading, you'll have a "24" processor display.
In the 2x10core 2.3 with hyper threading, you'll have a "40" processor display.

i would go with the 2x10 core 2.3 -3GHz as rindi pointed out/suggested.

Is this new server being spewed out to replace an existing one?
Something else you should consider, particularly when you will be using multiple CPu's (sockets), is software licensing. As far as I know the free version of VMware ESXi limits you to a single socket (the number of cores/threads doesn't matter). also other products, like the Oracle database, gets more expensive if you run it on more than one CPU socket. You'd have to check the licensing for the OS's/Software you will want to run on the server.
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Member_2_231077

Just two VMs? either of the CPUs is overkill, you certainly don't need two of them unless one of the virtual machines is computing a weather forecast in real time. Once you get up to about 30 VMs a single E5-2643 may become a bottleneck (but the disk subsystem would become the bottleneck before that anyway).

One note of warning, make sure you get a proper Smart Array controller, not a "dynamic" one if you are using the internal disk bays for running the VMs on (not that the dynamic controller supports SAS).
The only thing known in the question is the requirement that the sever be viable for 5 years and the suggestion that it is going into a banking firm, paperwork and such seven year retention for some, 10 year retention for other. Such that storage space will likely experience significant growth for DB space as well as documents/correspondence.......

The choices are further limited by the asker.