epyc 1u nvme server

[AllenAsm]

I'm trying to put together an epyc server tuned for drive performance. I'm looking at two models as barebone / base that I will add things to.

currently I'm looking at either

1014S-WTRT | 1U | A+ Servers | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.

or

RS500A-E10-RS4 | ASUS Servers and Workstations

www.asus.com

they seem to be fairly close in spec but I'd love opinions on both.

 

[BoredSysadmin]

tunes for drive performance is a bit too vague. Are you looking to fill 12x U.2 drives like Intel Optane P4800X [Edited] in 1U or you have something a bit more humble in mind?

 

[AllenAsm]

I'm looking for the most blazing fast drive speed for a fairly hard core RDBMS drive for ms sql server 2019 that will be used to process /analyze a bunch of medical (no PII or PHI) test data. So I'm trying to get something crazy fast on the drives and memory with the pci4 bus and NVME.

 

[BoredSysadmin]

how big is your dataset?
Also see this: Using Intel Optane Storage for SQL Server - SQLPerformance.com.

 

[i386]

Radian has nvram drives in u.2, they will probably annihilate (pcie) optanes in benchmarks and your budget...

RMS-375 - Radian Memory Systems

www.radianmemory.com

 

[BoredSysadmin]

Radian has nvram drives in u.2, they will probably annihilate (pcie) optanes in benchmarks and your budget...

RMS-375 - Radian Memory Systems

www.radianmemory.com

True on performance, NV-RAM>Optane, but 16GB per module, 192GB per 12 modules in 1U - no exactly high capacity/density solution

 

[AllenAsm]

Dataset is around 1.5 (ish) tb. Tons of tiny reads and writes.

 

[BoredSysadmin]

If you like Asus, you'd need to go to RS500A-E10-RS12U model, since others don't provide AMD NVMe raid
For SM, you'd need to get an extra 2x of these conversion cables: CBL-SAST-0817 and 4x U.2 drive caddies: MCP-220-00138-0B

As for specific drives, Optane would provide much better latency which would help you with your tons of tiny IOPS.
More specifically 4x Intel Optane P4800X 1.5TB in Raid 10 will get you both performance and resiliency

 

[AllenAsm]

This is what I am going to do. I'm getting the RS500A-E10-RS12U and putting 256gb ram. The drive situation is what I'm still trying to figure out. I can't really tell if the front panel drive trays are running at the super high speed 64gbs pcie 4.0 speeds or if I'm supposed to put them on an expansion card I put on the motherboard?

 

[BoredSysadmin]

pcie/nvme is basically a direct bus to cpu. nothing too magical about it. no need for expansion cards. I'd ask Asus if you need the servers preconfigured with the correct backplane and ensure caddies are correct.
I suspect in your case PCIe v3 vs v4 (2x possible throughput) won't make any difference - as you'd benefit much more from the low latency of optane storage.