Xeon D and ESXi

[Davewolfs]

Hey folks,

I'm looking to put together my first ESXi build. I'll be running this with probably around 6 VMs and I expect 2-3 to be quite active at times.

Initially I was set on a Xeon D 1540 but now I am not so sure. I'm considering something like a Xeon 2640 or 2630 V3.

My point of reference is actually an old i7 920 (overclocked to 3.4 but stock is fine) and has been for many years. I find that it can run what I need quite well. I just need something that can be on 24x7 and give me some more flexibility.

I guess what I am wondering is how will the Xeon D perform is it anywhere near my old 920 machine or am I better off with an E5?

I appreciate any feedback.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Personally I think you'd have an easier time with a socketed xeon rather than a xeon-D but it's very dependent on your workload; if you feel you need 8 cores then xeon-D is far, far cheaper to get a hold of that one or two xeons. How many vCPU's are you likely to allocate to your VMs and how busy are they likely to get? How much RAM are you likely to want?

Performance-wise I don't think you have anything to worry about. On aggregate, the 1540 is more-or-less akin to an i7 2600K which was a good 25-30% faster than the i7 920 in CPU-heavy benches IIRC. But of course that doesn't take things like single vs. multi-threaded into account. Single-threaded I'd imagine your 920 is about the same speed as a xeon D but finding a decent comparison is proving difficult. In more modern terms, Patrick did a decent comparison here and anandtech did a biggerer one here.

Do you have any other constraints? Size, noise, budget?

 

[Davewolfs]

Personally I think you'd have an easier time with a socketed xeon rather than a xeon-D but it's very dependent on your workload; if you feel you need 8 cores then xeon-D is far, far cheaper to get a hold of that one or two xeons. How many vCPU's are you likely to allocate to your VMs and how busy are they likely to get? How much RAM are you likely to want?

Performance-wise I don't think you have anything to worry about. On aggregate, the 1540 is more-or-less akin to an i7 2600K which was a good 25-30% faster than the i7 920 in CPU-heavy benches IIRC. But of course that doesn't take things like single vs. multi-threaded into account. Single-threaded I'd imagine your 920 is about the same speed as a xeon D but finding a decent comparison is proving difficult. In more modern terms, Patrick did a decent comparison here and anandtech did a biggerer one here.

Do you have any other constraints? Size, noise, budget?

For workload I am thinking it will breakdown like so give or take:

1. Freenas - 2 Cores
2. Data Collection Program which is busy only during business hours 4-6 Cores
3. VM for Plex/Home Theatre 2 cores (idle except during evenings for the most part)
4. VM's for test purposes/dev (most likely 1-2 cores per VM when spun up would be sufficient, these will mostly be idle)

We can probably expect that when one of the VM's is busy Plex probably isn't running. I think 64GB of Ram would be a good start. Perhaps slightly overkill but I'd like to use 32GB DIMMS. With respect to noise this is for the home and I don't currently have a dedicated server room. The quieter the better but I'm sure I can make an E5 quiet as well. Power is a bit of a concern since machine will be running 24x7.

Budget, to be honest the 1540 is not cheap. You consider $1075 for board with PSU/Case or say $1199 for a prebuilt SM 5028 system and you are getting pretty close to E5 V3 prices give or take a few hundred dollars so I'd like to stay within this range.

Any thoughts on using Passmark numbers as a very general guide?

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

What I ended up doing for mine was a cheap-assed workstation build (granted it runs windows + VMware workstation rather than being a dedicated hypervisor), namely a six-core E5-1650v3 and an ASRock X99-WS which together cost quite a bit less than the X10SDV-TLN4F (still does as far as I can tell, £817 here at the minute) but I'm not sure what the prices are like where you live or whether you want the 10GbE.

 

[Deslok]

Why did you pick VMware workstation with hyper-v included in windows 8/10(just curious) Also on that note from a cost perspective used workstations(I have a Dell T7500 currently) offer a great performance/value option

 

[Davewolfs]

Why did you pick VMware workstation with hyper-v included in windows 8/10(just curious) Also on that note from a cost perspective used workstations(I have a Dell T7500 currently) offer a great performance/value option

Overhead of running windows having to do updates and the possibility of it crashing. In addition I've read a significant number of posts of people running Freenas or OmniOS successfully using ESXi with passthrough on their controller. Haven't read anything on Windows 8/10 with VMWare workstation.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Why did you pick VMware workstation with hyper-v included in windows 8/10(just curious)

I only use windows 7 (hate hate HATE the UI of Win8/10 and W10's privacy-invading bollocks makes it an utter no-go for me) plus vmware workstation was a freebie and is directly portable to ESX should I ever feel the need to spin another one up. But ESX's needless pickiness with hardware and me not really needing anything approaching bare metal performance makes it more trouble than it's worth for my home lab. KVM much nicer to use from my POV.