Need a strong server for medium sized business

[framer]

Hello everyone, I run a business of around 35 people and more soon, I need a server that can handle many virtual computers at the same time, and it should have more than 24 TB of space in it.

 

Please recommend me a build or components that can handle 30+ virtual computers running linux at the same time, I also need a 10 gigabit ethernet port in this server.

 

If you have any questions you would like answered about them, feel free to ask.

 

My budget is around 3000 dollars, however I can extend that if this is not possible with this amount of money.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

PS: The components needs to be in Europe, I dont want tax on this.

[2FA]

This forum probably isn't the best one to ask questions about enterprise needs, most people here only see things from a consumer view point.

[★ Coups ★]

Check Linus's servers. They might have some good things you can pull out

[Hamosch]

I agree with @DeadEyePsycho

 

Just thought I'd ask what you need the 30 Linux VMs for, you'll get almost all the benefits with containers (LXC, Docker etc) and you'll get a much higher density.

 

But it all depends on what you need, just thought I'd throw it out.

[framer]

@DeadEyePsycho Where would you suggest I take this topic to? The best forum I have found is here.

 

@★ Coups ★ I am interested, can you give me a link? The best servers I have seen so far is dells rack servers

 

@Hamosch I need them for people to connect with rdp or something else, and work on there. It requires alot of storage and power, we do not have enough money to buy each guy a powerful computer, I have researched that.

 

Thanks for the replies so far.

[Hamosch]

40 minutes ago, framer said:

@Hamosch I need them for people to connect with rdp or something else, and work on there. It requires alot of storage and power, we do not have enough money to buy each guy a powerful computer, I have researched that.

Containers might be good for rdp,

Just did some testing on my Proxmox lab and got three debian lxc containers running XFCE4 with xrdp up and running. They use about 220MB RAM each for a total of 660MB total used from the host. The CPU overheads are also lower with containers.

 

and could easily connect to all of them simultaneously via MS RDP with no issues at all.

 

just food for thought

[framer]

1 minute ago, Hamosch said:

Containers might be good for rdp,

Just did some testing on my Proxmox lab and got three debian lxc containers running XFCE4 with xrdp up and running. They use about 220MB RAM each for a total of 660MB total used from the host. The CPU overheads are also lower with containers.

 

and could easily connect to all of them simultaneously via MS RDP with no issues at all.

 

just food for thought

I am interested in these containers, thanks for your answer, I will go researching now.

[Principis]

I think this is a good place to ask: https://www.technibble.com

 

[dalekphalm]

3 hours ago, framer said:

Hello everyone, I run a business of around 35 people and more soon, I need a server that can handle many virtual computers at the same time, and it should have more than 24 TB of space in it.

 

Please recommend me a build or components that can handle 30+ virtual computers running linux at the same time, I also need a 10 gigabit ethernet port in this server.

 

If you have any questions you would like answered about them, feel free to ask.

 

My budget is around 3000 dollars, however I can extend that if this is not possible with this amount of money.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

PS: The components needs to be in Europe, I dont want tax on this.

If you're planning on virtualizing 30 computers, $3000 isn't even gonna be close. You're looking at ranges of $10,000-$30,000. You're going to want at least one CPU core per VM to have good performance (Sure you can get away with less, and let the Host Hypervisor fight over the CPU resources and balance them as best it can, but that's far from ideal.

 

You're also going to want a ton of RAM, at least 2GB per VM, depending on what OS is used in the VM. If these are going to be "workstations" (Eg: Someone is going to RDP connect to the VM and run that as their office computer), then you'll likely want to give them at least 2 CPU cores (ideally, 4 if you have Hyperthreading) and at least 4GB of RAM (8GB would be better, especially if they are more of power users who, for example, open lots of tabs, etc).

 

So at bare minimum, you're looking at 2x 16 Core CPU's w/ 64GB of RAM. Ideally, it would be double both of those numbers. A Server with that kind of specs is easily going to be over $10,000. Consider that a single CPU of the type you will need is going to be not far off from your original budget of $3000.

 

And that's not even counting hard drives. If you need 24TB of usable space. Let's use WD Red Pro 4TB HDD's as an example:

4TB x 8 = 32TB of Raw Storage

Use RAID6 or RAIDZ2

You have dual parity drives, which mean you lose the capacity of 2x drives

Gives you 24TB of usable HDD space (Formatted space will be less of course, since the difference between TB and TiB and the way HDD manufacturers list the capacities - 21.8TiB of usable space)

 

WD Red Pro's are $210 a piece on Newegg.com - that's $1680 for HDD's alone.

 

And I wouldn't even use those HDD's in an actual business server environment. You should ideally go with SAS drives in a server environment like that - better suited for the workload.

 

In that case, you'd want something like the WD RE SAS Enterprise Drive ($240 per drive), or the Seagate Constellation SAS Enterprise Drive ($300 per drive). That brings your HDD cost up to $1920 or $2400 respectively.

 

Either way you cut it, $3000 isn't going to come close.

[framer]

22 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

If you're planning on virtualizing 30 computers, $3000 isn't even gonna be close. You're looking at ranges of $10,000-$30,000. You're going to want at least one CPU core per VM to have good performance (Sure you can get away with less, and let the Host Hypervisor fight over the CPU resources and balance them as best it can, but that's far from ideal.

 

You're also going to want a ton of RAM, at least 2GB per VM, depending on what OS is used in the VM. If these are going to be "workstations" (Eg: Someone is going to RDP connect to the VM and run that as their office computer), then you'll likely want to give them at least 2 CPU cores (ideally, 4 if you have Hyperthreading) and at least 4GB of RAM (8GB would be better, especially if they are more of power users who, for example, open lots of tabs, etc).

 

So at bare minimum, you're looking at 2x 16 Core CPU's w/ 64GB of RAM. Ideally, it would be double both of those numbers. A Server with that kind of specs is easily going to be over $10,000. Consider that a single CPU of the type you will need is going to be not far off from your original budget of $3000.

 

And that's not even counting hard drives. If you need 24TB of usable space. Let's use WD Red Pro 4TB HDD's as an example:

4TB x 8 = 32TB of Raw Storage

Use RAID6 or RAIDZ2

You have dual parity drives, which mean you lose the capacity of 2x drives

Gives you 24TB of usable HDD space (Formatted space will be less of course, since the difference between TB and TiB and the way HDD manufacturers list the capacities - 21.8TiB of usable space)

 

WD Red Pro's are $210 a piece on Newegg.com - that's $1680 for HDD's alone.

 

And I wouldn't even use those HDD's in an actual business server environment. You should ideally go with SAS drives in a server environment like that - better suited for the workload.

 

In that case, you'd want something like the WD RE SAS Enterprise Drive ($240 per drive), or the Seagate Constellation SAS Enterprise Drive ($300 per drive). That brings your HDD cost up to $1920 or $2400 respectively.

 

Either way you cut it, $3000 isn't going to come close.

Thank you for putting it into my scope, I already have some 4 TB Enterprise drives laying around so the drives are not with the price.

 

The users on the server are lightweigt arch linux users, they get 768 MB ram for each machine as thats all they need.

 

With that in mind, do you think I could get away with 7500 dollars?

[dalekphalm]

Just now, framer said:

Thank you for putting it into my scope, I already have some 4 TB Enterprise drives laying around so the drives are not with the price.

 

The users on the server are lightweigt arch linux users, they get 768 MB ram for each machine as thats all they need.

 

With that in mind, do you think I could get away with 7500 dollars?

You might be able to - depends on whether you want to custom build or buy from an OEM like Dell or HP.

 

I would spec out a Dell server w/ at least 16 cores/32 threads, and 32GB of RAM.

 

Here's one I came up with on Dell's site:

 

You're looking at similar pricing for Tower vs Rackmount chassis.

 

These prices are Canadian, and before taxes.

[framer]

10 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

You might be able to - depends on whether you want to custom build or buy from an OEM like Dell or HP.

 

I would spec out a Dell server w/ at least 16 cores/32 threads, and 32GB of RAM.

 

Here's one I came up with on Dell's site:

 

You're looking at similar pricing for Tower vs Rackmount chassis.

 

These prices are Canadian, and before taxes.

I already have a rack cabinet, and I live in Denmark so my prices are cheaper. Looking at the rack servers, I can get the "PowerEdge R630 - Online Base Configuration" for 51,000 kr, thats 7500 dollars.

 

That rack includes 2 Xeon® E5-2630 v3 processors and 16 GB ram (gonna upgrade ram as soon as I can.)

 

Would you recommend this server to me?

[Jarsky]

That's going to be some tight provisioning for 35-40 or more machines virtual machines.

Also what are you going to virtualise on? Are you going to be using ESXi/vSphere/vCentre? Have you factored in the licencing for this?

 

Ideally you're going to want at least 1/thread + 1GB/ram per machine if these are going to be all in constant use - so you're looking at a minimum of 24 physical cores (2 x 12 core CPU's - i.e 2 x E5 2670's) with 64gb ram (4 x 8GB chips per CPU) which will give you headway of a few machines for new staff and test deployments.

 

Ideally you'd also want to run your storage in a SAN/NAS seperate from your virtualisation server where the server has direct access to the drives. You'd then attach it as an iSCSi target to your ESXi.

 

 

 

 

[framer]

I do not have any license and I have another guy that is taking care of the software, I only work with hardware.

 

EDIT: talked with my software guy, he said that we are going to use VMware vSphere NFI or VMware ESXi 6.0.

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, framer said:

I already have a rack cabinet, and I live in Denmark so my prices are cheaper. Looking at the rack servers, I can get the "PowerEdge R630 - Online Base Configuration" for 51,000 kr, thats 7500 dollars.

 

That rack includes 2 Xeon® E5-2630 v3 processors and 16 GB ram (gonna upgrade ram as soon as I can.)

 

Would you recommend this server to me?

2x E5-2630 is gonna be REALLY TIGHT. Those are 6C/12T CPU's. That only gives you 12C/24T. I'd recommend 1C/2T per VM (or more), ideally. That's why I suggested the E5-2650, since it's 10C/20T, which gives you 20C/40T.

[framer]

8 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

2x E5-2630 is gonna be REALLY TIGHT. Those are 6C/12T CPU's. That only gives you 12C/24T. I'd recommend 1C/2T per VM (or more), ideally. That's why I suggested the E5-2650, since it's 10C/20T, which gives you 20C/40T.

Alright, I think i got all my questions answered, thanks for your and everyone's help.

 

If I forgot something i will just post in this thread again.