In part 1 of “Building a hyper-converged platform using VMware technology” I went through the sizing and scaling exercise. In short to recap, in order to run 100 VMs we would need the following resources:
- 100 x 1.5 vCPUs = ~30 cores
- 100 x 5 GB = 500GB of memory
- 100 x 50 GB (plus FTT etc) = 11.8 TB of disk space
From a storage perspective 11.8 TB is not a huge amount, 500 GB of memory can easily fit in a single host today, and 30 cores… well maybe not easilyin a single host but it is no huge requirement either. What are our options? Lets give an example of some server models that fall into the category we are discussing:
- SuperMicro Twin Pro – 2U chassis with 4 nodes. Per node: Capable of handling 6 * 2.5″ drives and on-board 10GbE. Supports the Intel E-2600 family and up to 1TB of memory
- SuperMicro is often used by startups, especially in the hyperconverged space but also hybrid storage vendors like Tintri use their hardware. Hey SuperMicro Marketing Team, this is something to be proud of… SuperMicro powers more infrastructure startups than anyone else probably!
- Note you can select 3 different disk controller types, LSI 3108, LSI 3008 and the Intel C600. Highly recommend the LSI controllers!
- HP Sl2500t – 2U chassis with 4 nodes. Per node: Capable of handling 6 * 2.5″ or 3 * 3.5″ drives and FlexibleLOM 10GbE can be included. Supports the Intel E-2600 family and up to 512GB of memory
- You can select from the various disk controllers HP offers, do note that today there are a limited number of controllers certified.
- Many probably don’t care, but the HP kit just looks awesome 🙂
- Dell C6000 series – 2U chassis with 4 nodes. Per node: Capable of handling 6 * 2.5″ per node or 3 * 3.5″ drives. Supports the Intel E-2600 family and up to 512GB of memory
- Note there is no on-board 10GbE or “LOM” type of solution, you will need to add a 10GbE PCIe card.
- Dell offers 3 different disk controllers including the LSI 2008 series. Make sure to check the HC.
First thing to note here is that all of the configuration above by default come with 4 nodes, yes you can order them with less but personally I wouldn’t recommend that. Strange thing is that in order to get configuration details for the Dell and HP you need to phone them up, so lets take a look at the SuperMicro Twin Pro as there are details to be found online. What are our configuration options? Well plenty I can tell you that. CPUs ranging low-end Quad-core 1.8GHz up to Twelve-core 2.7 GHz Intel CPUs. Memory configurations ranging from 2GB DIMMS to 32GB DIMMS including the various speeds. Physical disks ranging from 250GB 7200 RPM SATA Seagate to 1.2TB 10k RPM SAS Hitachi drives. Unlimited possibilities, and that is probably where it tends to get more complicated. [Read more…] about Building a hyper-converged platform using VMware technology part 2