LRDIMMs, RDIMMs, and Supermicro's Latest Twin
by Johan De Gelas on August 3, 2012 4:45 AM EST- Posted in
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Value for Money: the Supermicro Server
It is pretty hard to compare the Supemicro Twin with other servers on the market. Firstly, HP and Dell do not fully disclose the pricing of their dense rack servers. Secondly, as each server vendor has its own chassis and form factors, it is very hard to find a close match.
By puzzling together the available information from the HP (US) and several Supermicro (US based) resellers, we were able to make a rather rough comparison. Take it with a grain of salt as both servers are not completely targeted at the same market, but they are similar and the targeted markets do overlap.
| DIMM price comparison | ||||||
| Description | System | Remark | Price | |||
| Chassis | S6500 | Empty Chassis | $2549 : 2 = $1274 * | |||
| Node 1 | HP ProLiant SL250s Gen8 2U | 2 x Xeon 2665, 8GB | $5659 | |||
| Node 2 | HP ProLiant SL250s Gen8 2U | 2 x Xeon 2665, 8GB | $5659 | |||
| Total Base System | $13593 | |||||
| Supermicro 6027TR-D71RF | ||||||
| Chassis | 6027TR-D71RF+ | Chassis with motherboards | $2500 | |||
| Extra | 4 x Xeon 2665, 2 x 8GB | To compare with HP | $6000 | |||
| Total Base System | $8500 | |||||
*Chassis is 4U, with four 2U servers
HP designed a 4U server in which you can fit four half width 2U rack servers. We divided the chassis cost by two, to get an idea of how two HP SL-servers compare with the Supermicro 2U Twin.
As always, such a proprietary "blade-ish" design comes with a premium. The result is that the HP server is about 50% more expensive. The next thing you have to do is fill the server with DIMMs.
| DIMM price comparison | ||||||
| DIMM Type | Speed | Vendor | Price | |||
| 8GB RDIMM | 1600MHz | HP 647899-B21 | $191 | |||
| 8GB RDIMM LV | 1333MHz—LV | HP 647897-B21 | $146 | |||
| 16GB RDIMM | 1600MHz | HP 672631-B21 | $ 405 | |||
| 16GB RDIMM LV | 1333MHz—LV | HP 647901-B21 | $386 | |||
| 32GB LRDIMM LV | 1333MHz—LV | HP 647885-B21 | $2000 | |||
| 8GB RDIMM | 1600MHz | Samsung | $150 | |||
| 16GB RDIMM | 1600MHz | Samsung | $290 | |||
| 16GB LRDIMM | 1333MHz | Samsung | $460 | |||
| 32GB RDIMM | 1333MHz | Samsung | $1560 | |||
| 32GB LRDIMM | 1333MHz LV | Samsung | $1150 | |||
HP's pricing is pretty decent until we go up in DIMM capacity. The 8GB premium is around $40 per DIMM, which is relatively small in a $10000 server. At most you will paying about $640 extra if you buy 16 DIMMs. Once you get 16GB DIMMs, you are paying $115 more per DIMM, or a price premium of 40%. At $400 per DIMM, the DIMM investment starts to eat up a large share of the server budget.
Although the comparison is far from perfect, the conclusion is pretty straightforward. If hardware costs play an important role in your IT budget, Supermicro offers much more for your dollar. Two fully populated (16x16GB) Supermicro Twin servers will cost about $26k; a quad 4U HP S6500 server will run about $40k.
Of course, If the deal is part of a larger IT project involving consultancy and software costs, HP can make a case. Nevertheless, it must be said that the pricing of the Supermicro's servers is very attractive.
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koinkoin - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
For HPC solutions I like the Dell C6220, dense, and with 2 or 4GB of memory per cpu core you get a good configuration in a 2U chassis for 4 servers.But for VMware, servers like the R720 give you more room to play with memory and IO slots.
Not counting that those dense server don’t offer the same level of management and user friendliness.
JohanAnandtech - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
A few thoughts:1. Do you still need lots of I/O slots now that we can consolidate a lot of gigabit Ethernets in Two 10GBe
2. Management: ok, a typical blade server can offer a bit more, but the typical remote management solutions that Supermicro now offers are not bad at all. We have been using them for several years now.
Can you elaborate what you expect from the management solution that you won't expect to see in a dense server?
alpha754293 - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
re: network consolidationNetwork consolidation comes at a cost premium. You can still argue that an IB QDR will give you better performance/bandwith, but a switch is $6k and other systems that don't have IB QDR built in, it's about $1k per NIC. Cables are at least $100 a piece.
If you can use it and justify the cost, sure. But GbE is cheap. REALLY REALLY cheap now that it's been in the consumer space for quite some time.
And there aren't too many cases when you might exceed GbE (even the Ansys guys suggest investing in better hardware rather than expensive interconnects). And that says a LOT.
re: management
I've never tried Supermicro's IMPI, but it looks to be pretty decent. Even if that doesn't work, you can also use 3rd party like logmein and that works quite well too! (Although not available for Linux, but there are Linux/UNIX options available out there as well).
Supermicro also has an even higher density version of this server (4x half-width, 1U DP blade node.)
JonBendtsen - Monday, August 6, 2012 - link
I have tried Supermicro IPMI, works nicely. I can power on/off the machine and let it boot from a .iso image I have on my laptop. This means that in case I have to boot from a rescue CD, then I do not even have to plug a CD drive into the machine. Everything can be done from my laptop, even when I am not in the office, or even the country.bobbozzo - Tuesday, August 7, 2012 - link
Can you access boot screens and the BIOS from the IPMI?For Linux, I use SSH (or VNC server), but when you've got memory or disk errors, etc., it's nice to see the BIOS screens.
Bob
phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, August 9, 2012 - link
Using either the web interface on the IPMI chip itself, or the IPMIView software from SuperMicro, you get full keyboard, mouse, console redirection. Meaning, you can view the POST, BIOS, pre-boot, boot, and console of the system.You can also configure the system to use a serial console, and configure the installed OS to use a serial console, and then connect to the serial console remotely using the ipmitool program.
The IPMI implementation in SuperMicro motherboards (at least the H8DG6/H8DGi series, which we use) is very nice. And stable. And useful. :)
ForeverAlone - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Only 128GB RAM? Unacceptable!Guspaz - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
It starts to matter more when you're pouring on the VMs. With two sockets there, you're talking 16 cores, or 32 threads. That's the kind of machine that can handle a rather large number of VMs, and with only 128GB of RAM, that would be the limitation regarding how many VMs you could stick on there. For example, if you wanted to have a dedicated thread per VM, you're down to only 4GB per VM, which is kind of low for a server.darking - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
I think the price on the webpage is wrong. or atleast it differs by market.i just checked the Danish and the British webstores, and the 32GB LRDIMMS are priced at around 2200$ not the 3800$ that the US webpage has.
JohanAnandtech - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
They probably changed it in the last few days as HP as lowered their price to $2000 a while ago. But when I checked, it was $3800