Dell C6100 XS23-TY3 - 4x L5520 Xeon dual processor nodes + 96GB ram for under US$900.

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RimBlock

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Sep 18, 2011
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Since the explosion of the C6100 cloud servers hitting EBay, there are now a few sellers doing them for US$899 with more or less the spec below (double check as spec and pricing is changing quite fast).

C6100 @ US$899 deals;
8x Intel L5520 Xeon processors.
24GB ram per node (96GB ram total)
4 nodes (inc tray and server board).
C6100 Chassis.
4x 3.5" drive trays.
Single redundant power supply (space for second one).
Rails

The two sellers below have confirmed you can arrange your own collection and shipping (great for overseas buyers with shipping accounts).

Current links.
DELL-POWEREDGE-C6100-XS23-TY3-2U-4-x-HOT-PLUG-NODES-8-x-2-26GHz-QC-L5520-96GB

DELL-POWEREDGE-C6100-XS23-TY3-SERVER-8x-L5520-QUAD-CORE-CPUS-96GB-MEM-4x-TRAYS

Other deals are also available from various sellers supplying less ram, swapping the L5520 for L5420s or by offering only two nodes.

EBay search here.

RB
 
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mrkrad

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Oct 13, 2012
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how hard would it be to make these run 10gigabit and esxi compatible raid-1? I could live with 2 512gb 840 pro's if the raid is compatible with esxi 5.1 but need at least two 10 gigabit per node.

Do these have SLIC2.1 windows 2008 R2 stickers?

Man they should ditch the terrible L5520 and do an E5606 or E5603
 
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PigLover

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If you can live with LSI1068e-based raid (i.e., SATA-2 based raid) it would be trivial - though if you are looking at 840pros it might be more complex/expensive.

The 1068e mezz card is readily available for <$200/node. 10Gbe (Mellanox based) is available for <$100. You could also run M1015s in the PCIe slot and get your 10Gbe via the mezz card, but those 10Gbe cards seem to be running $400-500 each so it would get pricey real fast.

Agree on the L5520 - but the "they should ditch" comment doesn't really fit here. This is used, off-lease equipment in resale. You kinda take the inventory that is available. Given the launch dates of product and the typical 3-year lease cycle I think you'll likely see lots of X56xx based stuff on ebay this time next year - but for now its premature.
 
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dba

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Pick up a Dell/Mellanox Infiniband mezzanine card for $200 and use it as 10GbE? It won't be quite a fast as an Intel 10GbE card, but close enough. You can then slot in a PCIe HBA or RAID card, connected either to the internal disks or to an external chassis.

By the way, the 3.5" versions of the C6100 are fitted with cables for three SATA drives per node. The 2.5" disk versions are wired for six disks per node. Those six disks can either be SATA to the motherboard or SAS/SATA to an LSI Mezzanine card, with the Mezzanine card version being the more popular it seems. Converting from mezzanine to non-mezzanine means a $20 to $30 cable.
There are two versions of the Dell mezzanine card - LSISAS1068E and LSISAS2008 - but it seems that all or almost all C6100s use the 1068E version.

mrkrad said:
how hard would it be to make these run 10gigabit and esxi compatible raid-1? I could live with 2 512gb 840 pro's if the raid is compatible with esxi 5.1 but need at least two 10 gigabit per node.

Do these have SLIC2.1 windows 2008 R2 stickers?

Man they should ditch the terrible L5520 and do an E5606 or E5603
Click to expand...
 
Patrick

Patrick

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mrkrad said:
how hard would it be to make these run 10gigabit and esxi compatible raid-1? I could live with 2 512gb 840 pro's if the raid is compatible with esxi 5.1 but need at least two 10 gigabit per node.

Do these have SLIC2.1 windows 2008 R2 stickers?

Man they should ditch the terrible L5520 and do an E5606 or E5603
Click to expand...
Unless you can use AES-NI - the L5520's are pretty good actually. 4C/8T at 60w TDP each. The E5606 is 4C/4T 80w TDP and with a ~5% clock speed disadvantage (2.13 v. 2.26 on the L5520) They both had 8MB L2 cache. The E5606 used the slower 4.8GT/s bus v. the 5.86GT/s bus on the L5520.

Big improvements other than 32nm and hex cores for the 5600 series were: AES-NI, TXT, or SSE4.2. Otherwise the L5520 is significantly better than the E5606.
 
Patrick

Patrick

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dba said:
Pick up a Dell/Mellanox Infiniband mezzanine card for $200 and use it as 10GbE? It won't be quite a fast as an Intel 10GbE card, but close enough. You can then slot in a PCIe HBA or RAID card, connected either to the internal disks or to an external chassis.

By the way, the 3.5" versions of the C6100 are fitted with cables for three SATA drives per node. The 2.5" disk versions are wired for six disks per node. Those six disks can either be SATA to the motherboard or SAS/SATA to an LSI Mezzanine card, with the Mezzanine card version being the more popular it seems. Converting from mezzanine to non-mezzanine means a $20 to $30 cable.
There are two versions of the Dell mezzanine card - LSISAS1068E and LSISAS2008 - but it seems that all or almost all C6100s use the 1068E version.
Click to expand...
Did you get any of the LSI cards yet?
 
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dba

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Indeed. Now the unlucky part is that the second 24-bay C6100 showed up in shambles. The chassis had been gutted of cables and the disk backplane was barely attached - and of course it would cost far more to buy new cables than the chassis is worth. Justin handled it perfectly and is sending out a replacement unit.

Patrick said:
Lucky!!! Still need to figure out my plan.
Click to expand...
 
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PigLover

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I have four more of the 1068e cards and wire harnesses (3 drive harness only, unfortunately). PM me if interested. I'll give you a good price.
 
A

au.to

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PigLover said:
The 1068e mezz card is readily available for <$200/node. 10Gbe (Mellanox based) is available for <$100. You could also run M1015s in the PCIe slot and get your 10Gbe via the mezz card, but those 10Gbe cards seem to be running $400-500 each so it would get pricey real fast.
Click to expand...
10Gbe (Mellanox based) is available for <$100? where
 
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dba

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Patrick

Patrick

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I saw that... but is it worth almost 1/2 of a populated (with RAM) L5520 node? CPUs are slower.
 
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mrkrad

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99% of the time RAM+IOPS -now SQL server's new licensing makes intel sweet but for everyone else worry about RAM+IOPS.

SQL server is worlds biggest caching o/s (SQLOS), ddr3 is cheap $50/8gb rdimm ecc for now (trending up very fast)

Disk is always the problem.

I wonder if you can VSA these drives?
 
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dba

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I saw "AMD Opteron" and immediately thought (assumed) G34 slot, just ready for something crazy like a 6366HE while selling the two 41xx CPUs on eBay to recovery the purchase price.

But you are correct. I looked and it's not a G34 slot and even if it was I'm not that certain that the CPUs are resellable. Oh well.

Patrick said:
I saw that... but is it worth almost 1/2 of a populated (with RAM) L5520 node? CPUs are slower.
Click to expand...
 
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