So this is a pretty big necro, but, in a 4 node all flash vSAN cluster, how would these chips fair with handling basic SQL Server, SharePoint, AD VMs and scenarios? Will there be a noticeable performance hit?
Just shy of three years.
It depends on what your goals are, and how many drives you want to be attached.
If I were buying new, I would seriously look at something like an AMD EPYC 7232P over these. For some perspective, the EPYC 7232P is faster for single-threaded performance and even in tasks like the Linux Kernel Compile we are seeing a 2.1x speedup over the Xeon D-1537.
So here is how I am working through it:
- Xeon D-1500 is still good if you need physically separate nodes, and you need low power per node. Also if you just need 1-2 nodes.
- If you need a level of CPU performance, RAM capacity, and PCIe connectivity, Getting a single AMD EPYC 7402P and virtualizing will be less expensive and (significantly) faster than four Xeon D-1537. You get the same number of DIMM channels but can use faster/ higher capacity DIMMs. Even on the power side this will end up being better.
- A mid-point is something like getting a Xeon Silver 4210 machine. Your performance per dollar is much higher. Power consumption is up, but at a given level of performance not by an enormous amount. You also get more RAM capacity/ PCIe per socket.
Remember, the Xeon D-1537 still had some PCIe Gen2 lanes.
We have the numbers on the EPYC 7262 and EPYC 7232P but they are not published yet. The former is slightly faster than a Xeon Silver 4210, the latter is slightly slower.
