What is the ideal configuration for PVE5?

[TechSean]

My office is in the process of migrating away from Esxi and PVE3, and we'd like to move to PVE5.

What hardware / configuration would make for an ideal PVE 5 server hosting Windows 2012 / SQL Server?

We're willing to buy ssds as long as we're not replacing them every 6 months.


At the minute, we cannot buy our servers new, so a lot of our stuff is used, and we'll usually buy a Dell server from Gen11 or Gen12 and then configure it to match an application specific needs.

 

[LnxBil]

What hardware / configuration would make for an ideal PVE 5 server hosting Windows 2012 / SQL Server?

I love to answer those questions. Everyone is totally exited about my answer right until I present the costs :-D

Seriously, this depends heavily on the use case. If "your office" consists of 10.000 employers, one database server could not be enough. If you only have 10 employers that use e.g. a CRM system on a daily basis, you can run your SQL-server from a Raspberry Pi.

We're willing to buy ssds as long as we're not replacing them every 6 months.

Then buy the right ones. Enterprise grade SSD with support and desired DWPD for your purpose.

At the minute, we cannot buy our servers new, so a lot of our stuff is used, and we'll usually buy a Dell server from Gen11 or Gen12 and then configure it to match an application specific needs.

That's totally cool if you have a cluster, yet if you only have one machine, buy with support to reduce the time-to-recovery.

 

[TechSean]

I love to answer those questions. Everyone is totally exited about my answer right until I present the costs :-D

Seriously, this depends heavily on the use case. If "your office" consists of 10.000 employers, one database server could not be enough. If you only have 10 employers that use e.g. a CRM system on a daily basis, you can run your SQL-server from a Raspberry Pi.



Then buy the right ones. Enterprise grade SSD with support and desired DWPD for your purpose.



That's totally cool if you have a cluster, yet if you only have one machine, buy with support to reduce the time-to-recovery.

Thank you for the response.
Our explain our use case.
Small SIP/VOIP integrator/re-seller which all of our records are stored in SQL. Customer info, lots of CDR (call records), and how everything is routed, and 100k numbers.

For Enterprise SSDs, what brand/model SSD is recommended? Any specific raid card or should we look at pass through for ZFS?

Right now, I'm testing PVE 5 using a raid 1 config with consumer grade SSDs, and only getting FSYNC of around 1500, which from what I've read... seems a bit slow.

We do want to go with a cluster. 1 SQL cluster of 2-3 nodes, and a cluster of 2-3 nodesfor everything else that isn't performance driven.
We want to be HA wherever possible if we can make it financially possible.

 

[LnxBil]

Any specific raid card or should we look at pass through for ZFS?

a good go-to-guide is this:

http://www.sebastien-han.fr/blog/20...-if-your-ssd-is-suitable-as-a-journal-device/

Any specific raid card or should we look at pass through for ZFS?

ZFS has a lot of features, yet needs RAM for itself. So pump of the RAM and use ZFS on enterprise grade SSDs.

Right now, I'm testing PVE 5 using a raid 1 config with consumer grade SSDs, and only getting FSYNC of around 1500, which from what I've read... seems a bit slow.

pveperf is a good quick benchmark, but please use fio to get a more sophisticated benchmark. I also only get 1600 on my 6 enterprise grade SSD setup, yet a throughput of 2,5 GB/sec with multiple threads and over 100k IOPS with fio.​

 

[TechSean]

a good go-to-guide is this:

http://www.sebastien-han.fr/blog/20...-if-your-ssd-is-suitable-as-a-journal-device/



ZFS has a lot of features, yet needs RAM for itself. So pump of the RAM and use ZFS on enterprise grade SSDs.



pveperf is a good quick benchmark, but please use fio to get a more sophisticated benchmark. I also only get 1600 on my 6 enterprise grade SSD setup, yet a throughput of 2,5 GB/sec with multiple threads and over 100k IOPS with fio.​

Groovy, this gives me confidence I'm not completely train wrecking everything.