Dell R760 Servers Compatable?

jubin3

Hi,

I'm in the process of getting specs for some new servers and i've been quoted for the following:

2x Dell R760 - Intel Xenon-Platinum 8468v 48C/96T
1x Dell ME5024 Storage Array - SAS

Checking on the XenServer HCL i can't see the server listed.
https://hcl.xenserver.com/servers/?serversupport__version=21&vendor=3&form_factor=2

I'd like to think i'm 99% sure xcp-ng would be fine and i'm guessing it's just not been though a round of testing or am i best of dropping to a R750 which would reduce me down to a max of 40C/80T CPU?

Thanks in advanced.

olivierlambert

Hi!

Yeah, that should work OK. However, nowadays, I would go more on EPYC CPUs vs Intel, but it's up to you and your requirements.

Also, for storage, NFS is often better than iSCSI

jubin3

@olivierlambert Hi Thanks for coming back to me with that, I've not had much dealing with AMD within the server world so Intel is possible what I'd like to stick with in that case, storage will be SAS apposed to any networking solution for DB performance.

Are there any clear difference for between the 2 CPUs?

olivierlambert

AMD is really powerful, but I'm not really aware about how better they are vs latest Intel gen.

jubin3

@olivierlambert Yer, i've just been looking at clock speeds, and they are more powerful but a big jump in price, but something for me to look into, thank you for you help!

olivierlambert

For my usage, core count matters less than decent clock speed. But it's only my use case and indeed you might need many cores. It's just a reminder -however- that sometimes it's faster to use less cores but at faster speed.

planedrop

I second @olivierlambert saying that you should consider EPYC, they are fantastic to work with, have moved my entire org to almost 100% EPYC systems and they have been nothing but rock solid reliable, fast, and efficient. You get more power for the money too and more expansion options.

And both Intel and AMD run just fine, there aren't really any issues or differences that matter for most workloads.

EPYC is mature at this point though, the "teething" issues from years ago are long gone, I have some first gen EPYC stuff running, some that have had uptime in the realm of a year without a single hiccup.