Dell PowerEdge R715 review

virtualization considerations

... just few words about virtualization using VMware software. Regardless how sweet 24cores/box may sound, Opteron based servers are not a sensible choice for SME's.

According to VMware vSphere's pricing:
http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/pricing.htm
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Dell R710 is much cheaper choice. vShpere licenses for 2P servers with 12+cores are around 10-fold the price for similarly performing 2P servers with 6core Xeons.

By stasi47 on 25 Nov 2010

VMware software licensing not an issue

There is the misconception that AMD systems will cost more because of VMware licensing policies - as highlighted by stasi47 comment.

However - you need to compare total system price - not just software costs - to get the real picture

Take a look at some of the pricing comparisions in this blog
http://blogs.amd.com/work/2010/07/06/simply-specta
cular-virtualization-%E2%80%93-the-value-4p-%E2%80
%9Cmagny-cours%E2%80%9D-edition/

TCO is calculated on the entire system cost - not just the price of software

By mlewis on 30 Nov 2010

RE: VMware software licensing not an issue

As expected, the comparison you pointed out, is utterly useless for SMEs - please keep in mind that in my previous comment, I was explicitly referring to SMEs. However what worries me most, is that the presented cost scheme even in case of larger enterprises doesn't add up to a can of beans.

Allow me to point out few discrepancies:
1. The system with an Intel X5650 processor has about 5.2GB RAM / vCPU (64GB/12cores) the AMD-based system has only half of it! That additional 128GB RAM will costs you about $12000.
2. Referring to common benchmarks (and sense?) Opterons 6174 with its 12cores aren't twice as fast as 6core Xeons X5650. They more or less perform op par with X5650. ( http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html ) Which means that you need twice as many Opteron-based vCPUs to get the job done as quickly as using X5650-based vCPU.

So adding $12000 for 128GB RAM and multiplying the cost of one VM by two (as you need two Opteron-based vCPUs instead of one Xeon-based vCPU). You will get more or less: $2274 per single VM!

Still, in that very limited cost calculation on AMD's blog, there is not a single word about possible bottlenecks when keeping 24VMs, compared to Intel's 12VMs on a single iron. (e.g.: you are not going to outfit AMD based servers with twice as many iSCSI controllers for free).
Also there is no mention about single point of failure. I would prefer a server failure with 12 vCPUs to a server failure with 48 vCPUs as VMotioning that many cores needs, uhm well, 48 vCPUs available.

Please keep mind that when writing these words I am not trying to make yet another AMD-Intel flame war. What I would like to point out is that VMware pricing policy is totally sick, unfair and needs to be changed.

By stasi47 on 1 Dec 2010