Quick Take: Dell/Nehalem Take #2, 2P VMmark Spot

The new 1st runner-up spot for VMmark in the “8 core” category was taken yesterday by Dell’s R710 – just edging-out the previous second spot HP ProLiant BL490 G6 by 0.1% – a virtual dead heat. Equipped with a pair of Xeon X5570 ($1386/ea, bulk list) and 96GB registered DDR3/1066 (12x8GB), the 2U, rack mount R710 weighs-in with a tile ratio of 1.43 over 102 VMs. :

• Dell R710 w/redundant high-output power supply, ($18,209)
• 2 x Intel Xeon X5570 Processors (included)
• 96GB ECC DDR3/1066 (12×8GB) (included)
• 2 x Broadcom NexXtreme II 5709 dual-port GigabitEthernet w/TOE (included)
• 1 x Intel PRO 1000VT quad-port GigabitEthernet (1x PCIe-x4 slot, $529)
• 3 x QLogic QLE2462 FC HBA (1x PCIe slot, $1,219/ea)
• 1 x LSI1078 SAS Controller (on-board)
• 8 x 15K SAS OS drive, RAID10 (included)
• Required ProSupport package ($2,164)
• Total as Configured: $24,559 ($241/VM, not including storage)

Three Dell/EMC CX3-40f arrays were used as the storage backing of the test. The storage system included 8GB cache, 2 enclosures and 15, 15K disks per array delivering 19 LUNs at about 300GB each. Intel’s Hyper-Threading and  “Turbo Boost” were enabled for 8-thread, 3.33GHz core clocking as was VT; however embedded SATA and USB were disabled as is common practice.

At about $1,445/tile ($241/VM) the new “second dog” delivers its best at a 20% price premium over Lenovo’s “top dog” – although the non-standard OS drive configuration makes-up a half of the difference, with Dell’s mandatory support package making-up the remainder. Using a simple RAID1 SAS and eliminating the support package would have droped the cost to $20,421 – a dead heat with Lenovo at $182/VM.

Comparing the Dell R710 the 2P, 12-core benchmark HP DL385 G6 Istanbul system at 15.54@11 tiles:

• HP DL385 G6  ($5,840)
• 2 x AMD 2435 Istanbul Processors (included)
• 64GB ECC DDR2/667 (8×8GB) ($433/DIMM)
• 2 x Broadcom 5709 dual-port GigabitEthernet (on-board)
• 1 x Intel 82571EB dual-port GigabitEthernet (1x PCIe slot, $150/ea)
• 1 x QLogic QLE2462 FC HBA (1x PCIe slot, $1,219/ea)
• 1 x HP SAS Controller (on-board)
• 2 x SAS OS drive (included)
• $10,673/system total (versus $14,696 complete from HP)

Direct pricing shows Istanbul’s numbers at $1,336/tile ($223/VM) which is  a 7.5% savings per-VM over the Dell R710. Going to the street – for memory only – changes the Istanbul picture to $970/tile ($162/VM) representing a 33% savings over the R710.

SOLORI’s Take: Istanbul continues to offer a 20-30% CAPEX value proposition against Nehalem in the virtualization use case – even without IOMMU and higher memory bandwidth promised in upcoming Magny-Cours. With the HE parts running around $500 per processor, the OPEX benefits are there for Istanbul too. It is difficult to understand why HP wants to charge $900/DIMM for 8GB PC-5300 sticks when they are available on the street for 50% less – that’s a 100% markup. Looking at what HP charges for 8GB DDR3/1066 – $1,700/DIM – they are at least consistent. HP’s memory pricing practice makes one thing clear – customers are not buying large memory configurations from their system vendors…

On the contrary, Dell appears to be happy to offer decent prices on 8GB DDR3/1066 with their R710 at approximately $837/DIMM – almost par with street prices.  Looking to see if this parity held up with Dell’s AMD offerings, we examined the prices offered with Dell’s R805: while – at $680/DIMM – Dell’s prices were significantly better than HP’s, they still exceeded the market by 50%. Still, we were able to configure a Dell R805 with AMD 2435’s for much less than the equivalent HP system:

• Dell R805 w/redundant power ($7,214)
• 2 x AMD 2435 Istanbul Processors (included)
• 64GB ECC DDR2/667 (8×8GB) ($433/ea, street)
• 4 x Broadcom 5708 GigabitEthernet (on-board)
• 1 x Intel PRO 100oPT dual-port GigabitEthernet (1x PCIe slot, included)
• 1 x QLogic QLE2462 FC HBA (1x PCIe slot, included)
• 1 x Dell PERC SAS Controller (on-board)
• 2 x SAS OS drive (included)
• $10,678/system total (versus $12,702 complete from Dell)

This offering from Dell should be able to deliver equivalent performance with HP’s DL385 G6 and likewise savings/VM compared to the Nehalem-based R710. Even at the $12,702 price as delivered from Dell, the R805 represents a potential $192/VM price point – about $50/VM (25%) savings over the R710.

Magny-Cours Spotted

Magny-Cours, 12-core Processor

AMD’s next generation “G34” socket Magny-Cours processor was spotted recently by XbitLabs running in AMD’s 4-way test mule platform. We’ve talked about Magny-Cours and socket-G34 before, but had no picture until now. The multi-chip module (MCM) heritage is obvious given it’s rectangular shape.

Critical for AMD will be HT3+DCA2 efficiency and memory bandwidth to counter the apparent success of Nehalem-EP’s SMT technology. Although AMD does not consider hyperthreading to be a viable technology for them, it appears to be working for Intel in benchmark cases.

While seems logical that more “physical” cores should scale better than the “logical” cores provided by SMT, Intel is making some ground of legacy “physical core” systems, demonstrating what appears to be a linear scaling in VMmark. However, Intel has a fine reputation for chasing – and mastering – benchmark performance only to show marginal gains in real-world applications.

Meanwhile, the presure mounts on Instanbul’s successful launch in June with white box vendors making ready for the next wave of “product release buzz” to stimulate sinking sales. Decision makers will have a lot of spreadsheet work to do to determine where the real price performance lies. Based on the high-cost of dense DDR3 and DDR2, the 16-DIMM/CPU advantage is weighing heavily on AMD’s side from a CAPEX and OPEX perspective (DDR2 is already a well-entrenched component of all socket-F platforms).

Up to now, Intel’s big benchmark winners have been the W5580 and X5570 with $1,700 and $1,500 unit prices, respectively. Compounded with high-cost DDR3 dual-rank memory, or reduction in memory bandwidth (which eliminates a significant advantage), the high-end Nehalem-EP is temporarily caught in an economic bind, severely limiting its price-performance suitability.