What are the main indicators of the purchase server?

In this era of the Internet, IT has become an essential element for companies to gain market competition, but for many SMEs, the lack of IT awareness and the lack of IT technicians make them build their own IT. The system is hindered, coupled with excessive product promotion and technical packaging by equipment manufacturers, which makes these users add a lot of troubles in the face of complicated concepts and indifferent product configuration parameters. How do the majority of SMEs choose the server that suits them?

To this end, we call: 800-858-2776 (landline) /400-889-7200 (mobile phone), consulted Dell expert team with rich experience in server solutions, they are exposed to Dell daily The user gave us an example for analysis. The Dell expert group believes that from the perspective of business scale and business needs, the majority of SMEs should be more streamlined than large Internet companies. When selecting servers, they should be more concerned with the attributes and performance of the hardware itself. The carrying capacity of enterprise business. In addition, since the components of x86 servers are mostly common standard components, the combination support and optimization capabilities provided by server vendors in providing server products are also critical. And this also largely determines whether the company can have a good experience after purchasing a server.

Regardless of the fresh concept of IT, CPU, internal memory and system I/O are still the three core components of the server. The main configuration of the measurement server naturally starts from these three aspects. Whether the three core components can work in harmony and effectively shows the real effort of server providers. Therefore, SMEs should mainly consider the following aspects when purchasing IA servers.

CPU

As we all know, Intel’s microprocessor manufacturing development strategy follows the Tick-Tock model, which alternates with more advanced processes or new architectures. . This means that even if the enterprise server processor code is E5\\E7, it may be a different process and a different architecture. Processors with different processes and architectures determine the performance of the server. Only good server vendors can launch the latest Intel processor products in the first place. The new family of processors dramatically improves the processing of applications such as virtualization, cloud computing, design automation, and real-time transactions, and finds a better balance between high performance and low cost. Excellent server vendors will maintain good relationships with Intel, have good quality assurance, and offer a diverse product portfolio. For example, the PowerEdge server commonly used by enterprises is not only the first in the industry to use Intel's latest processor, but also provides a wide range of products such as dual, quad, and eight, so DELL has become the most popular server supplier. One.

The benefits of server vendors' product diversification are not only the choice of multiple frequency space, but also the enterprise's low power consumption. After all, the diversity of enterprise applications determines the difference in computing power requirements of the server. It is not necessary to have E5\\E7, E3 and Pentium or even Atom. For example, DELL's C5220 features shared power and cooling resources, and increases the density to save costs for the enterprise; the T20 is small and quiet, and can be used in the office.

I/O System

Generally, the server encounters two performance bottlenecks, one is the processor. The higher the processor's clock speed, the stronger the natural performance. The other is the I/O device, which is divided into disk IO and network IO. Due to the variety of applications in the enterprise, the performance requirements of different applications for disk IO and network IO are also different. Excellent server vendors will take into account the needs of the company in product design, and produce products that meet the needs of the enterprise while helping the company control the cost of purchase.

Take the PowerEdge R420 and R720 servers that are commonly used in enterprises. Both servers use the industry-leading PCIe 3.0 expansion slot, but the R720 has five more slots than the R420, so companies are more willing With the R720 to host enterprise virtualization, databases and some ERP workloads, the R420 can accommodate up to 16TB of disk capacity in just 1U of space, making it more of a corporate file server.

For the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises, self-built private cloud may be more difficult, but virtualization applications are still more common, users have a higher demand for higher bandwidth and lower latency for network I/O. Enterprises want to use network adapters with higher bandwidth specifications, and they also want to use network adapters to remove vendor bindings. To this end, Dell has adopted 10 Gigabit Ethernet Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) on the latest 12th generation servers to replace traditional network interface cards (NICs) and onboard network card (LOM) network infrastructures, while adopting related Partitioning technologies (such as Dell NPAR NICs) optimize bandwidth to meet the needs of I/O-intensive applications and virtualized servers for small and medium-sized businesses.

The Dell expert group pointed out that the purchase of I /O equipment should not rely solely on its performance parameters, according to the company's own business needs and conditions to configure reasonable equipment. Don't waste the cost of purchasing equipment for the pursuit of too many configurations beyond actual demand.

Memory

Nowadays, the development of memory technology has gone far beyond the past. The performance of the latest DDR4 is said to be twice that of the previous generation. Some enterprise applications even open up. Out of the algorithm implementation of "memory calculation". As a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises, even if the memory capacity used now is not large, it is hoped that manufacturers can provide servers with large memory capacity expansion. The number of memory expansion slots is mainly determined by the server motherboard chip, and is designed according to the main application area of ​​the server. Like the R720, there are more than 24 DIMM slots that can handle the actual demand for memory and capacity in enterprise applications.

When selecting a server, in addition to the need to examine the subsystems of the above servers, the following contents can not be ignored.

Server Management System

A bunch of cold hardware is combined, system management becomes a problem, there are always tools to manage, monitor and manipulate the server. Running, and this has become a key step for manufacturers to win the favor of enterprises. From the feedback of many enterprises, this management system needs the following characteristics: simple, complete system management functions, good graphical user interface, web browser-based operation, local and remote network management Execute command operations, etc. If you are using a PowerEdge series server, I believe you have already felt the power of the OpenManage system. The Dell Panel of Experts pointed out that an excellent IT management system provides friendly support for the server's physical environment, virtual environment, local and remote environments, enabling system administrators to focus on managing the entire network by providing comprehensive one-to-one system management. .

Virtualization Features

Today, servers have powerful processors, huge amounts of memory, high I/O bandwidth, and flexible network connectivity options. Whether users want to consolidate servers that are growing because of rapid business expansion, they want to centralize their operations with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions, or simply want to run more virtualized applications on a single server hardware platform. Programs, virtualization software and server adaptation and virtualization software integration management can all become a problem. Good server vendors will use it as a basic principle of product design and provide good integration services. In this regard, the Dell expert group pointed out that Dell has a good solution in managing server physical and virtual assets.

Energy Management

The same configuration of the server, the power consumed under the same workload is different, the difference lies in the manufacturer's product design Optimize the design. Nowadays, energy conservation and consumption reduction have received widespread attention. Server vendors are also racking their brains on power usage. Dell even makes the power consumption of a Dell R720 server equivalent to only one night light. It can be said that the energy-saving efforts of today's manufacturers have a good performance in software optimization and hardware transformation. The low-power server design mentioned earlier is a concrete manifestation of hardware transformation, such as shared cooling system. Some manufacturers also use high-temperature component technology, such as Dell's fresh air technology, which allows the server to operate at a higher temperature than the average computer room.

Reliability

Nowadays, the industry likes to talk about reliability. After all, the scale of the business has gone up, and the loss caused by system downtime is even greater. The reliability of the server is quite critical. Security and trouble-free have always been the characteristics that minicomputers are highly regarded in the industry. Today, x86 servers are also in line with this aspect. Even if I believe that Intel's E7 v2 has five 9 security guarantees, it is quite another to use such a good processor to achieve a few 9 on the server. A good server solution guarantees secure, continuous access to its IT systems, such as disk and power supplies, and redundant fail-safe hypervisors for virtualized environments.

The above aspects can be the main indicators for the majority of SMEs in selecting server products. As the industry grows, server providers are increasingly offering more sophisticated services, from hardware to software, from back-end to front-end, from physical devices to virtualization.