Xeon D Cluster Advice

[adamswebsiteaccount]

Hi All,

I am rebuilding the home lab and deciding what to use where. I am building a 3 host KVM cluster first, how would the newer Xeon D-2123IT compare with the older D-1541?

I don't expect the guest to all be competing for CPU time at the same time all too often so would the newer architecture be better?

Thanks,

Adam

 

[mrpasc]

I have both Xeon D-1541 and Xeon D-2143IT in the lab. So I can compare 8C/16T (you compare 4C/8T Skylake vs. 8C/16T Broadwell).
On a short: I will stay with the Broadwell (1541) for the lab and sell the Skylake ones. Why? Cause the only two advantages of the skylakes (AVX512 and quad channel memory) aren’t useful for my needs, but are „paid“ with a significant higher power consumption, even at iddle. The Xeon D-21xx are very very poor at idle power consumption.
Just my 2 eurocents

 

[DavidRa]

What's performance like though? I've found it difficult to dredge up any benchmark comparisons between the various families of Xeon D. One of my annoyances is that the D-1518 I'm using for virtual firewalls is ... well, lacklustre. I'd really like to go to something like the D-1736 but the pricing on those is insane.

 

[mrpasc]

Well, the 1518 is based on the Broadwell Pentium, so not that powerful. 1541 would be around 2.5 times that powerful: https://www.servethehome.com/intel-xeon-d-1541-benchmarks/
2143IT is very close to Xeon SP Silver 4110.

 

[amalurk]

You aren't comparing the same number of cores with the 2123it vs 1541. They both have a single thread passmark in the 1700s but the 1541 has a multicore mark of 10k and the 2123it only has a multicore score of about 6800 because it has half the cores of the 1541. So newer would not be better if your guest are competing for CPU because the 2123it has half the cores of the 1541. You could go with 2143it for same number of cores. It has 8 cores like the 1541 and about a 20% higher passmark than 1541. Not sure cost is worth it though if you can get 1541 at good discount.

 

[adamswebsiteaccount]

Thanks for the advice everyone - very much appreciated