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Re: Consolidation recommendation

 
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doris grady
Frequent Advisor

Consolidation recommendation

We have six (6) K580 servers and planning to consolidate in a 3 for 1 manor to two (2)rp34xx or rp44xx servers. I'd like your recommendations for the server to look at (suggested cpu and RAM to get the same or better performance(.
1 K580 has 6 cpus and 3.5GB RAM
4 K580s have 6 cpus and 4GB RAM
1 K580 has 4 cpus and 4GB RAM

All are running HPUX 11.11 and all are running the same low-impact, non-invasive application.

Thank you.
10 REPLIES 10
A. Clay Stephenson
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: Consolidation recommendation

You should be able to easily replace all 6 of these K's with 2 rp4410's. Probably 2 processors per server is all you need. You will need to up the memory to at least equal the sum of your existing boxes.
If it ain't broke, I can fix that.
Jeff Schussele
Honored Contributor

Re: Consolidation recommendation

Hi Doris,

Be sure you carefully consider your I/O needs when you select new server(s) - usable counts are as follows:

rp3410 ==> 2
rp3440 ==> 4
rp4440 ==> 6

Also some slots in these servers get a lot more bandwidth than others & you'll need to use those slots for any "combo" cards that are now frequently necessary due to these low slot counts.

My 2 cents,
Jeff
PERSEVERANCE -- Remember, whatever does not kill you only makes you stronger!
doris grady
Frequent Advisor

Re: Consolidation recommendation

Can you break that down a bit more Jeff. I am unsure if I follow with the I/O information listed for those systems. Thanks
Robert-Jan Goossens
Honored Contributor

Re: Consolidation recommendation

Doris,

Jeff is referring to the number of PCI slots inside the rp-class servers.

http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/entry_level/index.html

Regards,
Robert-Jan
Jeff Schussele
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: Consolidation recommendation

Hi (again) Doris,

Those counts are the number of usable PCI slots for I/O boards on the various systems.
So if you needed 2 fibre channel adapters per server for instance, that would exhaust *all* the PCI slots in a rp3410.

HTH,
Jeff
PERSEVERANCE -- Remember, whatever does not kill you only makes you stronger!
Ted Buis
Honored Contributor

Re: Consolidation recommendation

I would try to avoid reducing the number of disk spindles and would suggest going with slightly more memory if you want better performance. You have to look at what I/O slots are used on your K580s and make sure that you have enough slots in the consolidated server to connect external arrays or for additional LAN cards. There are some great combo cards that can do this now, with two FC and two GigE LANs for a single slot. The rp34xx has fewer slots but basically the same I/O bandwidth as the rp44x0.
Mom 6
doris grady
Frequent Advisor

Re: Consolidation recommendation

Thanks for the good info. Would 2 or 3 older rp7400s (N4000s) with the appropriate memory, etc. also be able to handle the same consolidated K580 loads as well as the newer rp models? We have several on hand and if we won't see a performance hit, we may use them for the project.
Dave Wherry
Esteemed Contributor

Re: Consolidation recommendation

Doris,
A 6 way K580 has an estimated TPM of around 25,000. Any of the current PA-RISC systems exceed that estimate using only a single CPU.
Are you just planning on combining the environments from 3 of these K class onto a single box and the same for the other 3 environments? Or, do you still want to keep them seperate yet use fewer systems? You can do this with vPars or nPars depending on what your requirements are.
In a partitioned world a single system could handle the load using a single CPU for each partition. What you need to consider then is all the other resources. How many disk drives and PCI cards each partition requires. Can you assign enough memory to each partition? There are many ways to approach this.
As for your question about retasking existing rp7400's, that would work, provided there are enough of the other required resources. An rp7400 with 8 PA-8700 750MHz processors comes in at about 80,000 TPM. So, you could combine 3 of your K's onto a single rp7400, compute wise.

Alzhy
Honored Contributor

Re: Consolidation recommendation

I'll probably opt for a single rp7420 or 2 rp34xx/44xx and use vPars software so you still ensure each server has its own environment. Your migration should be relatively easy using this aproach with no major changes to the environments as the hostnames will stay the same. Non-OS components will simply need to be restored onthe vPar environment's OS disks and your good. If your disks are on older Autoraids then plan for HBAs that will be compatible or migrate them to a SAN.
Hakuna Matata.