looking for DL360 G9 as SQL Server - questions regarding setup

[john-meyer]

Hello, 

I need a new DL360 G9 for SQL

I am unsure about this points:

a)  I found this CPU because of ten Cores -  My Idea is to have two Intel Xeon E5-2660v CPUs

b)   Drives for Boot Partition I found this SSD´s: 

2 x 764925-B21    HP M1 Solid-State-Laufwerk, 240 GB, 6G, SATA, Value Endurance, SF  
(whats the different to this one? 717969-B21)

c) 

any advantage using two HP 81Q 8 Gb 1 Port PCIe Fibre Channel-Hostbusadapter  against one 82Q?

d)     4 x   16 GB better than 2 x 32 GB?

e) as far as I know, there is now SQL Sizing tool available - right?

thank you in advance!

[waaronb]

I don't know if HP still has the SQL sizing tool available, but you can do the work yourself and figure out what your SQL workload will be.

Will it involve a lot of CPU, I/O (disk or network), or memory, or all of the above?  Maybe you're upgrading an existing server and you already know where the limitations are which will help you figure out which parts you need to improve.

As far as the memory goes, I would choose 4x16 GB instead of 2x32 GB, just because you'll get better memory bandwidth by populating one DIMM in each of the 4 channels of a CPU so it can benefit from the interleaving.

Of course this could change based on whether you need *more* memory, or simply *faster* memory.  On HP servers you'll still get the best speeds even if you have 3 DIMMs per channel (official HP memory only).  But usually the more DIMMs you add per channel, it'll throttle the clock speed.  Keep that all in mind... but you can be sure you'll get the fastest performance by doing one dimm per channel in all 4 channels for each CPU.  And if you have dual CPUs you'll want to make sure each one has the same setup.

[Charlie K. (PL)]

Ad a)

Be carefull, because sometimes is better to choose only one processor but with the highest, the most powerfull specification. Why ? If you license SQL and other software as "per socket" licensing - then you overpay many dollars having 2 socket used vs 1 socket and more expansive processor. So think over your licensing, too.

Ad b)

This drive of course will be better than SAS, but still it is poor as for SSD performance. I don't know what bugged you have, but if you want really powerfull machine - you should consider buing as storage PCI Express SSDs. For Gen 9 they are called: HP NVMe PCIe SFF (2.5-inch) Solid State Drives (versions: Read Intensive, Mixed Use, Write Intensive).  Such drive cost over 1000 USD (price actual at Oct 2015) but trust me - performace as transfer and I/O operations is about ten times beter than for that Value SATA SSD you mentioned !!! So NVMe PCIe SSD is ideal storage for SQL operations and transaction log.

Regards

Charlie K.