[illumos-Discuss] CPU/Chipset architecture for high performance ZFS servers

[Alasdair Lumsden]

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone could comment on the best CPU/Chipset 
architecture (Intel E56xx/X56xx vs AMD 61xx) for high performance 
ZFS/Nexenta based storage servers.

There will be two clustered storage heads, with dual 10GigE adapters 
attached to multiple SAS 6Gbps disk shelves with 20-80 15k RPM SAS 
disks, plus multiple ZeusRAM drives as ZIL devices, with the potential 
for whole disk shelves of L2ARC cache.

The storage would be a backend to Oracle 10g boxes running intensive 
batch jobs from high end Intel kit (32+ cores), so performance is critical.

For something like this I'm guessing 96GB+ of RAM per head is going to 
be needed, and I'm trying to figure out whether 2 CPU sockets is enough, 
or whether 4 sockets would be beneficial.

I'm trying to price this up as an alternative to a typical 
NetApp/EMC/Hitachi style solution, and would be interested to hear if 
anyone has had similar successes displacing proprietary vendor solutions 
with this type of thing.

Cheers,

Alasdair