Which quad E7 system will boot faster?

Which Quad E7 V4 system will boot faster?

  • Dell PowerEdge R930

    Votes: 8 32.0%
  • Supermicro SuperServer 8048B-TR4FT

    Votes: 17 68.0%

  • Total voters
    25
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Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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I had two Xeon E7 systems booting earlier today for OS installations and I noticed something, they are really slow.

The Dell has 4x E7-8890 V4's while the Supermicro has 4x E7-8870 V3's.

Back in college there was a local bar that had turtle races on St. Patrick's day. In some ways, the speed reminded me of that kind of racing despite the fact that these systems each have a massive amount of compute.

Here is the plan: vote in this thread. I am going to set each system to defaults, logon via IPMI then boot and make a video of it. I will install additional network cards, NVMe drives and a LSI HBA in the Supermicro to make it relatively similar. Both systems will boot CentOS 7.2 and we will record from hitting IPMI power on to the logon screen in CentOS.

Cast your votes and feel free to comment with reasons in this thread.

I think the recording will happen on Friday and I will post it to the STH YouTube channel ServeTheHomeVideo
 
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TuxDude

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Sep 17, 2011
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I'm voting for the Supermicro. Having less integration between too many integrated management bits should let it get through faster, while the Dell is sitting around waiting for lifecycle-controllers to inventory all of the components (which all have to wait for their own embedded bits to finish booting before they can return inventory data) or other crap like that.

It's a good thing servers don't usually reboot often, because with the way the industry's been going the last few generations of servers a single daily reboot will soon mean only 50% uptime.


Edit - It may not be possible to test it without physical access to the boxes, but it might be a better test to start with the servers completely unpowered (unplugged, or managed PDU). I've seen a number of boxes now that after first applying power won't even start POST until the IPMI SoC has finished booting - it might take most of a minute for POST to start, which could vary significantly between brands.
 
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Patrick

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I have no clue, but I bet both are faster than The HP Gen9s.
I wish I had a HPE DL580 Gen9 and a Lenovo system in the lab. That would be most of the quad E7 V4 capable systems available at that point.
 

William

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May 7, 2015
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Yes they are slow to boot. I did that many times on the SM Quad, drove me crazy LOL
 

Klee

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Jun 2, 2016
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Well there is a lot of stuff being initialized during the boot process.
 

MiniKnight

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Mar 30, 2012
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NYC
This is tough. I know Dell has a bigger software team. If you've used iDRAC it has so much more functionality than Supermicro's IPMI.

Someone a Dell has done optimizations but others have added features and wait.

I thought these systems are never supposed to reboot!?!?

Vote cast.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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Both are exactly the same... right before your boss shits a brick because the systems are needing a reboot :eek: and you're self employed :p
 
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Patrick

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Just did the test video (had to adjust the Dell's boot order)

The fastest boot I have seen thus far is just under 5 minutes.
 

William

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May 7, 2015
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For both systems ?

I thought the SM machine booted a little faster than that.
 

CookiesLikeWhoa

Active Member
Sep 7, 2016
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You should do one later for kicks later where the system is filled with raid/HBA cards that all need to initialize as well. See if you can hit 10 minutes for boot.

Either way I think the SM system will boot faster. I have no justification for this other than a strong dislike for anything Dell.
 

Patrick

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10 minutes is not too far off.

The iDRAC license expired and I just got the updated key today. Threw a wrench in my video production plans!
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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Just be sure you have similar memory configs... That is the biggest time sap.