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vmware ESX whitebox - AMD vs. Intel

C

CosmoJoe

Member
Greetings,

Looking for some CPU advice. I am planning on putting together 2 home lab systems to run vmware ESX, play around with clustering, etc. I was pricing out Intel vs AMD platforms and find that a 6 core Thuban processor and board are a heck of a lot cheaper than going with a comperable Intel platform. On the other hand, with an x58 based board I can install more RAM in total.

I am also not sure which is more effective from a virtualization standpoint; more physical cores from an AMD CPU vs. hyperthreading on Intel CPUs. Again as this is a lab setting so its not like the load will be heavy.

Thanks in advance for any advice/experience!
 
AMD also offers ECC on all CPUs (as long as the motherboard supports it), while with Intel you can only use ECC with a server grade CPU (Xeon).
 
For a home server lab, just go AMD. AMD is actually pretty good for virtualization anyway. But here is some things to think through. One you better make sure the board, storage controllers, and nics are supported. Two if you are not learning VMWare there are better choices that won't require as much hardware headache for vitual labs.
 
For a home lab system, I'd recommend buying used hardware. Previous generation stuff like Conroe or Clovertown is plentiful for cheap on eBay. That is, unless you have need to test & benchmark specific hardware.
 
CosmoJoe said:
Greetings,

I am also not sure which is more effective from a virtualization standpoint; more physical cores from an AMD CPU vs. hyperthreading on Intel CPUs.
Click to expand...

Since you are comparing two different processors, it is an apples-to-oranges question.

In general, physical cores are preferred from power hungry user perspective. Hyper-threads execute on logical cores. Two logical cores on the same physical core cannot actually execute simultaneously. Hyper threading only helps speed up context switching between threads, but doesn't otherwise parallelize the threads. However, there is a point when the cost of more physical cores becomes prohibitive. The whole point of HTT is it can be accomplished with just a little extra silicon. Otherwise, physical cores can do anything a logical core can do, plus actually execute a thread fully concurrent.

In my book, HTT is just a marketing term that puts a name on one of the many optimizations that the CPU microcode does to execute code faster. If it weren't called Hyper-Threading, and exposed to the OS, we'd probably not care, we'd just list it along with other things like predictive branching, prefect, u-ops, etc. The differentiating factor with HTT is it allows the programmer / OS scheduler to give a hint to the processor that "this thread will execute soon", vs. just letting the chip choose which optimization to use where, and sometimes predicting the wrong path.

For VMware, what I would do, in your case, would be to compare the brute force of the processor (no hyperthreading) cores in question. If 6 x AMD cores > 4 x Intel cores. That is the amount of physical raw processing the CPU can do in parallel. If it is a tie, then HTT is the tie-breaker.
 
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If you are looking to buy new and not expecting to need the best single core performance, I would buy the cheapest AM3 quad core Phenom II you can find and pair it with a motherboard that runs ECC memory. If you need more than 16GB of ECC then I'd start looking at the 1366 platform and I'd preferably be looking at people selling off to get SB. 😀
 
Deals on 6core Thubans are abound, proper motherboards fully support ECC memory, RAM is cheap, you cant go wrong going AMD, just get an FX chipset for full IOMMU support.
 
Are you using the free ESX? If so, not sure if you can assign more then 4 cores to a single VM. I'd like to play around more with their software but it's pretty expensive.
 
Go with an Intel-based system.

Although AMD's cheap hardware is pretty compelling for a home ESX server, the compatibility with ESX is not that great. Intel systems (including Intel chipsets) share a lot of components with low-end Intel-based servers that VMware explicitly supports, so budget Intel machines are much more likely to function properly.
 
Thanks for the great feedback.

Can you give me any details regarding AMD compatibility? Not saying I don't believe you, but I have seen a few other posts/blogs where PhenomII platform was used for whitebox build and no mention of missing functionality, etc.

Thanks in advance!
 
CosmoJoe said:
Can you give me any details regarding AMD compatibility? Not saying I don't believe you, but I have seen a few other posts/blogs where PhenomII platform was used for whitebox build and no mention of missing functionality, etc.
Click to expand...

VMware only maintains the drivers necessary to support servers that they have certified, and since you can't easily add drivers, you're pretty much stuck if ESX doesn't have a driver for your hardware. VMware doesn't support any whitebox platform that I know of (except for quasi-whitebox vendors like SuperMicro), so neither AMD nor Intel-based whitebox systems are guaranteed to work. However, there's a lot of component overlap between mid-range+ Intel desktops and cheap Intel servers, so if your whitebox is a pure Intel system (Intel chipset, Intel storage controller, Intel NIC, etc.), it's likely to work properly out of the box.

OTOH, AMD relies much more on third parties to supply various system components, so components you'd find in an AMD desktop will usually be different (and sourced from different vendors) than what you'd find in an low-end AMD server. In addition, AMD's server development efforts are focused more on higher-end x86 servers where parts are engineered specifically for their respective server platforms. As such, the amount of low-end AMD-based hardware supported by ESX is low, and the amount of AMD desktop boards with ESX-supported components is even lower.

That's not to say that AMD desktops won't work with ESX. The primary compatibility issue is with NICs and storage controllers. If your integrated NIC or storage controller doesn't work with ESX, you can always replace it with a discrete replacement that is supported. Of course, any cost savings you may have achieved by going with AMD will be out the window at that point.

Bottom line: If you want a cheap ESX server with minimal fuss, go with Intel.
 
grimpr said:
Deals on 6core Thubans are abound, proper motherboards fully support ECC memory, RAM is cheap, you cant go wrong going AMD, just get an FX chipset for full IOMMU support.
Click to expand...

Actually, you have to be careful which motherboard you purchase with AMD, because even thought the chipsets support (800, 900) IOMMU, not all motherboards properly implement the feature.

It's actually pretty spotty without going to high end Opteron server vendors.
 
nenforcer said:
Actually, you have to be careful which motherboard you purchase with AMD, because even thought the chipsets support (800, 900) IOMMU, not all motherboards properly implement the feature.

It's actually pretty spotty without going to high end Opteron server vendors.
Click to expand...

I have a rule, i just avoid anything with the Gigabyte logo, never had any problems.
 
theevilsharpie said:
Go with an Intel-based system.

Although AMD's cheap hardware is pretty compelling for a home ESX server, the compatibility with ESX is not that great. Intel systems (including Intel chipsets) share a lot of components with low-end Intel-based servers that VMware explicitly supports, so budget Intel machines are much more likely to function properly.
Click to expand...

I was debating Intel vs AMD for a machine mainly to run VMs and while doing research came across this link, which says Hyper-threading is not good for VM.

http://www.virtualinsanity.com/inde...he-whole-core-and-nothing-but-the-whole-core/
 
hasu said:
I was debating Intel vs AMD for a machine mainly to run VMs and while doing research came across this link, which says Hyper-threading is not good for VM.

http://www.virtualinsanity.com/inde...he-whole-core-and-nothing-but-the-whole-core/
Click to expand...

did you even read your own link?

first off, his conclusion was based on a microsoft technet article. not from VMware.

secondly, it's application specific (exchange).

third of all, following the technet article, Microsoft is recommending that HT be disabled in all exchange configurations, not just in virtualized instances.

so this has nothing to do with HT + VM.
it has to do with HT + exchange.
 
Most of the HTT content on Technet originates from Netburst HTT and the issues involved there, where OS and software were not HTT aware. So you have to be careful what advice you follow, a lot of it is outdated. Since Intel reworked HTT, Nehalem HTT should stand on its own. I'm not voting for or against it, but I will say benchmarks look better with Nehalem. I'm also running VM and DB servers with Netburst HTT just fine. The whole thing is a red herring. If disabling HTT "fixes" your problem, your servers are probably too taxed anyway, and its time for an upgrade.

I agree with BlahBlahYouToo, it is app specific. A correctly written app should work fine with HTT; the problem lies when software or admin makes the assumption that a HTT core = a real core, and sets degree of parallelism so.
 
Vesku said:
If you are looking to buy new and not expecting to need the best single core performance, I would buy the cheapest AM3 quad core Phenom II you can find and pair it with a motherboard that runs ECC memory. If you need more than 16GB of ECC then I'd start looking at the 1366 platform and I'd preferably be looking at people selling off to get SB. 😀
Click to expand...

Clean used 1366 is the way to go. Forget the crappy AMD chip above. A cheap Thuban rig could work, though. Use lots of RAM in either case. I don't think you could go wrong either way.
 
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