ESXi and Xen white box

[jay-118]

I'm putting together an esxi and xen white box to play with and do some testing.  And was drawn in by the value of the new athlon II x4 620. $99 for a 2.6 quad-core is hard to beat.  The rest of the system would be running a gigabit 770 board with 8gb of ddr3 1333. But I'm considering two other options and figured I would get some input.

First option is the phenom II x4 925 - $150: upgrade to 2.8ghz and a 6meg L3 cache (same 4x128-L1 & 4x512-L2 as the athlon). Not sure if there is really much else different that would effect my use.

Will the 6megs of L3 make a signifigant difference? And does phenom II ofer any other benefits over athlon II?

Second option is a scavanged core2duo e8500: currently running my main desktop so I'm leaning away from this option.  But if the beast of a dual core could compete with a quad, in a virtualization server I may consider the option.  But also I would be sticking with ddr2 800, rather than dd3 1333, which it self would be a decent preformance hit.  

Could a fast dual core and ddr2 compete with a moderate quad and ddr3, at running a dozen vms?

Keep in mind this is not a production system so value over preformance is the goal.  And the cheapes intel quad option, with virt, is the Q8400 at $170. This also being financed through my newegg acount, so there are some availability limits. But if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks
Jason M Normand
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[Mark J. Dulcey]

jay@... wrote:
> I'm putting together an esxi and xen white box to play with and do some testing.  And was drawn in by the value of the new athlon II x4 620. $99 for a 2.6 quad-core is hard to beat.  The rest of the system would be running a gigabit 770 board with 8gb of ddr3 1333. But I'm considering two other options and figured I would get some input.
>
> First option is the phenom II x4 925 - $150: upgrade to 2.8ghz and a 6meg L3 cache (same 4x128-L1 & 4x512-L2 as the athlon). Not sure if there is really much else different that would effect my use.
>
> Will the 6megs of L3 make a signifigant difference? And does phenom II ofer any other benefits over athlon II?

Here's a link that compares the performance of the Athlon II X4 and the
Phenom II X4: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3638 
That should give you an idea of whether spending the extra $50 is
worthwhile for you.

I find the new Athlon II X4 605e intriguing. True, you give up some
performance (only 2.3GHz), but a quad with 45w TDP should be killer for
cool and quiet system builds. It should sell for about $150 when you can
actually get one. Here's a link with all the new CPUs:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/4283
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[jay-118]

Well I've been studying up and it does seem the phenom II x4 is the better option for a vm server.  The athlon II x4 is the same cpu minus the shared cache. But shared cache is good for vms since they generally don't stick to a single core for long.  Thus if the data is cached there is only a 1 in 4 chance of the proces being able to access it.  L3 cache is shared across all processors.  Unfortunately amd also uses an exclusive cache, and I have not found any info on if this has been optimized some how with amd-v.

Interestingly I found out that the cache on the core 2 quad is only shared between 2 processors., not all 4.  Its litterally 2 core 2 duos on the same chip. Thus it can have the same issue as the athlon, but only at a 1 in 2 chance.  The i7 and i5 are all L3 caches and shared between all processors.

------Original Message------
From: Mark J. Dulcey
Sender: discuss-bounces@...
To: BLU
Subject: Re: ESXi and Xen white box
Sent: Oct 26, 2009 12:30 PM

jay@... wrote:
> I'm putting together an esxi and xen white box to play with and do some testing.  And was drawn in by the value of the new athlon II x4 620. $99 for a 2.6 quad-core is hard to beat.  The rest of the system would be running a gigabit 770 board with 8gb of ddr3 1333. But I'm considering two other options and figured I would get some input.
>
> First option is the phenom II x4 925 - $150: upgrade to 2.8ghz and a 6meg L3 cache (same 4x128-L1 & 4x512-L2 as the athlon). Not sure if there is really much else different that would effect my use.
>
> Will the 6megs of L3 make a signifigant difference? And does phenom II ofer any other benefits over athlon II?

Here's a link that compares the performance of the Athlon II X4 and the
Phenom II X4: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3638 
That should give you an idea of whether spending the extra $50 is
worthwhile for you.

I find the new Athlon II X4 605e intriguing. True, you give up some
performance (only 2.3GHz), but a quad with 45w TDP should be killer for
cool and quiet system builds. It should sell for about $150 when you can
actually get one. Here's a link with all the new CPUs:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/4283
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[Shankar Viswanathan]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 8:48 PM,  <jay@...> wrote:
> Well I've been studying up and it does seem the phenom II x4 is the better option for a vm server.  The athlon II x4 is the same cpu minus the shared cache. But shared cache is good for vms since they generally don't stick to a single core for long.  Thus if the data is cached there is only a 1 in 4 chance of the proces being able to access it.  L3 cache is shared across all processors.  Unfortunately amd also uses an exclusive cache, and I have not found any info on if this has been optimized some how with amd-v.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "exclusive cache", but as
you mention the L3 cache is shared across all the 4 cores on the
Phenom x4 and Phenom II x4. You are also correct that a shared cache
is useful for VMs if the hypervisor doesn't employ some sort of core
affinity for each guest.

But to really say if the shared L3 will provide a big performance
benefit, I'd have to know what kinds of applications will be running
inside each guest instance. If those applications are memory bound and
the working set can fit in the L3, then you'll see a measurable
performance difference.

-Shankar
(* disclaimer: I work for AMD)

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[jay-118]

Yeah, my problem is I don't have a fixed work load in mind.  Will be for testing mostly, but also ill probably use it for some personal stuff.

That being said it doesn't matter much, because I have decided to cut out the fluff for now and just go with a xeon x3430, basically an i5 with ecc and some additional VT features. now its just a question of how much of the new chipset I can get running on esxi, or if ill just be sticking to opensolaris and xen/xvm.
 
------Original Message------
From: Shankar Viswanathan
Sender: vidyashankar.viswanathan@...
To: jay@...
Cc: BLU
Subject: Re: ESXi and Xen white box
Sent: Oct 26, 2009 10:46 PM

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 8:48 PM,  <jay@...> wrote:
> Well I've been studying up and it does seem the phenom II x4 is the better option for a vm server.  The athlon II x4 is the same cpu minus the shared cache. But shared cache is good for vms since they generally don't stick to a single core for long.  Thus if the data is cached there is only a 1 in 4 chance of the proces being able to access it.  L3 cache is shared across all processors.  Unfortunately amd also uses an exclusive cache, and I have not found any info on if this has been optimized some how with amd-v.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "exclusive cache", but as
you mention the L3 cache is shared across all the 4 cores on the
Phenom x4 and Phenom II x4. You are also correct that a shared cache
is useful for VMs if the hypervisor doesn't employ some sort of core
affinity for each guest.

But to really say if the shared L3 will provide a big performance
benefit, I'd have to know what kinds of applications will be running
inside each guest instance. If those applications are memory bound and
the working set can fit in the L3, then you'll see a measurable
performance difference.

-Shankar
(* disclaimer: I work for AMD)



Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

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