Upgrade advice from AMD FX-9590 to Intel or AMD Naples?

[ntruhan]

Hello,
I had built a ESXi system originally with 5.5 on it, but have upgraded to VMWare vSphere 6.5. It runs an FX-9590 processor (220W, but undervolted) with 32GB DDR3 RAM (Max) on an ASRock 990FX Extreme9 board that is also water cooled (trying to quiet it a bit). Also have a 256GB SSD for primary drive and vSphere, and a 1TB SSHD for secondary.

It works, but if I run much more than 2 VMs it gets very sluggish and you hear all the fans ramp up so quiet kind of goes out the window which is bad since it is sitting in my office 3 feet from me. I figure part of it is the memory, the other is the CPU.

I need to upgrade to something that can handle more than a few virtual machines, minimally DDR4 and 64GB RAM, hoping this time on an IPMI board, like a SuperMicro board.

I am just not sure if I should pull the trigger on Intel Xeon system like a 8-12 core lower TDP processor, or wait on the release of the new AMD Zen Naples servers which should be Q2... I know the AMD Zen itself hasn't performed up to expectations, but in multi-threaded loads it did. The other question is will any boards with IPMI support it on launch.

I am also hoping to just pull the plug on the old system, move the drives over and boot back up, although I am probably dreaming with that.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Nathan

 

[PigLover]

Naples won't be available until late 3rd qtr, earliest. Unless you can be patient it is not an option.

 

[Patrick]

You can get Xeon D, E3 V6, or E5 today. Both new and used options. All three will be faster and use less power.

Naples, when available (not just launched) will be new pricing since there will be no used inventory.

In our Naples coverage we have shown that the platforms to date are using standard IPMI/ BMCs

 

[ntruhan]

OK, what about the Core i7 Processors? They are quite a bit less expensive than the Xeon's and the ASUS X99-WS/IPMI board would seem to work and have the IPMI support I needed. The only thing I didn't see in a feature set for the i7 is vPro which I believe is more security related and not Virtualization. The latest Gen 7 i7's seem to support all the virtualization stuff. The only Xeon's I saw close to the same were the used ES processors on ebay which I would be worried about using the Engineering Samples.

Thanks Again.

 

[ntruhan]

Sorry to revive an old thread, I haven't pulled the trigger yet, and with the flood of newer processors and setups that are hitting the market, I waited. I don't like to use the current system anymore as it takes forever to do anything now and seems more counter-productive. Since we now know AMD Naples is actually EPYC... Prices don't seem too bad in general. Will have to see once Supermicro releases 1P motherboard, but processor seems to be about $800 and supported in VMWare 6.5u1. But I am reading it isn't good with larger workloads like Database, more for Web Server type and I have mixed loads I want to run in test but still have to worry about power and noise as well.

I looked at the D series, but wasn't sure if they were too under-powered for running 4 or 5 VMs at once without serious lag. I thought I could get away with that on my 9590 and was sorely mistaken and don't want to make that mistake again.

What are others running for a home lab that actually responds nicely, not lags 15 minutes to start a VM that should run in 2 minutes and takes 4 to refresh a screen between tasks....

If I have to spend some on it, i have permission as long as it passes the WAF (quiet and power efficient).

 

[Patrick]

The Xeon D is a good option. You may want to also look at the Xeon Silver 4108 if you are going latest-generation.

The reason is simple. 8 cores / 16 threads each for $417. By next week most retail channels I would expect to have the chips (even Amazon/ Newegg) at around 1K pricing.

By using two chips, for $417 each ($834 total + motherboard which will be pricey) you get two lower power parts at 85W TDP. That means they will be decently easy to cool since you can use two coolers.

That is also a lot more CPU power than a Xeon D will have, even the D-1587. You can also use 12x DDR4 DIMM channels and up to 24 DIMMs if your motherboard supports it. Power consumption is higher even in single socket mode. C622 will get you 10GbE as well. If you do not need the cores/ RAM you can also single socket and save a hefty sum.

That may sound like an odd recommendation, but I am turning into a big fan of the 4108's this generation at the low end. The two core turbo up to 3.0GHz is very good.