At this point, we are building another hyper-v host server in our environment.. we have about 35 virtual machines spread over 3 hyper-v hosts at this point.. most of these servers are 5+ years old and only 8 core machines with sata enterprise drives. In the past i've created raid6 arrays that hold all the servers on one box plus maybe another raid6 array for a passthrough disk to a virtual box as well.
On one of the older boxes we run a virtual 16GB instance of sql server 2008, as well as application tiers for TFS, Sharepoint 2013 etc.. we also have two Exchange 2010 VM's.. one of which is 300+GB.. these types of applications spread over 3 hosts..
These days these old boxes are seemingly dragging.. too many vms on one box for sure.. way beyond the old one box per core rule... as many as 14 on one box alone (8 cores)..
Now we come to today.. this is what i've been spec'ing for a new build:
CPU: E5-2650 v3 2.3 ghz x 2 (10 cores, 20 threads on each cpu)
Motherboard: X10DAI-B
Chasis: SupermicroSC846BE1C-R1K28B 4U, sas3/sata single expander
Supermicro was suggesting going with one of these 3 supermicro cards.. saying that they cant guarantee other brands will work such as Areca (unless its the lsi-avago chipset).. anyone have experience with supermicro?
The debate is on this new box.. going with raid6 vs raid10.. also if sas3 is overkill on either of these, or maybe just for raid6, and the option of going with an enterprise sata drive array should be considered?
Raid10, seems like a big suck of drive slots.. though maybe I dont need to have more than 3 drives in a stripe x 2 for this, to beat out say the performance of Raid6.. which normally i always use at least 4-5 drives for Raid6.. perhaps there is a calculator to compare RAID10 with less in the stripe vs Raid6 with more.
Any thoughts on the best route to take here?
This will all go on Hyper-V under Windows Server 2012 R2 x64.. Ill also have a second dual port nic card, so that each VM has an option of VirtualNetwork #1 or #2 as i've done in the past with the other hosts.
And with the new CPU, does the old one VM per physical core still apply.. or is it one per thread since this new CPU is hyper threaded?
I'm considering doing VM replication down the road as well.. to help for situations where one host goes down..
Thanks in advance for any suggestions
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