# Data center requirements...



## PK-her0 (Sep 17, 2007)

hello guys,

didnt really know where to post this so i chose server
im doing a project on cloud and data centers.
and wondered what hardware/software would be required for a data center

i want to have the ability to host about 1000 web sites and 50 virtual servers.

functionality will be:
web sites (obviously)
email
vms
a site building package
and each customer is to have there own control panel like cpanel or plesk or something
also will be hosting a CRM system for clients.

i know its hard to work out exactly as web sites can be different sizes and virtual machines will have varying levels
of software installed servicing different environments and client requirements. Im just looking for a general figure.

some questions:

is it better having one monster of a server running server data center edition that will have unlimited hyper V machines. or is it better to have 4 to 6 lesser servers in some kind of cluster/load balancing setup? naturally i think its not good to hold all your eggs in one basket...but what about costings? im sure if i made a pros and cons list it would help determine the best action to take...what about broadband speed? what would my line requirements be...how would you work this out?

just wanted to get some info that will point me in the right direction

thanks for reading
pk


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## zx10guy (Mar 30, 2008)

Is this a theoretical exercise or are you seriously looking to be hosting service? Have you set a budget for this?


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## PK-her0 (Sep 17, 2007)

actually zx10 im in discussions with a board and a few colleagues who are looking if this is viable for our area...our budget would be between 350 to 800 thousand euro...but we want to grow it in stages.


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## zx10guy (Mar 30, 2008)

I assume that budget is for the initial standup of the data center. Have you factored in continuing monthly costs. What about IT staff to support your customers? Have you identified a physical location?


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## PK-her0 (Sep 17, 2007)

yes we have been compiling a business plan for the last few months everything you mentioned is checked?

The initial startup cost covers the data center, staff running costs etc, our BP is projecting for the next 3 years...

we have a premises with a really fast fibre optic channel we are planning to use.
but will eventually locate our base to a larger city

thanks for your help...have you experience in this sort of setup???

PS"I know there are a lot of hosting companies out there...I'm not convinced that this is the best move, but im going along as something good could come out of it, and im researching and learning things im interested in...what you think zx???"


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## zx10guy (Mar 30, 2008)

I don't have complete experience in doing what you're looking to do. I've set up datacenters for some government customers so many of the things you're sorting out was already done for me. I only know about some of these topics as it was part of my discussions with the various groups responsible for getting the facility set up for me.

Depending on how big you're looking to make this, you may or may not want to pay to have your own physical facility. It may be more economical for you all to rent space in a colocation facility. Various ISPs will have circuits already pulled to these facilities. You would just contract out the space and then work out the circuit and IPs with the ISP there. That way, you're not worried about things such as planning out adequate redundant power and cooling.

I really think you all should start small with say providing web hosting space and see how things go. If things go well, then you can add other hosting type services. The big companies that offer hosting and cloud services have it down where they provide a package based on what you need. If you want physical hosting space, they'll give you something like a ASA5505 firewall and a particular server outfitted in a certain configuration. There are also other ways to maximize your network infrastructure on top of using some sort of VM hypervisor that goes towards designing for multi-tenancy.


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## PK-her0 (Sep 17, 2007)

zx10 may i please pm you regarding a few things?

let me know
pk


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## zx10guy (Mar 30, 2008)

Sure. But depending on the questions, it might be beneficial to others to have the discussion here.


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## PK-her0 (Sep 17, 2007)

ok no prob...

i want to get three servers...all these servers are for VM's that we will offer to our clients.
I havent thought about VM software yet but am thinking VMware

1st server must host 80 vm's with the following spec:
Ram Up to 2GB
CPU Core 2,4 GHz
Storage 50 GB HDD

2nd server must host 60 vm's with the following spec:
Ram Up to 4GB
CPU Core 2,4 GHz
Storage 100 GB HDD

3rd server must host 40 vm's with the following spec:
Ram Up to 8GB
CPU Core 2,4 GHz
Storage 200 GB HDD

I spoke to Dell this week to get assistance regarding this...this is the hardware they quoted me on.

Components:

Intel Xeon E5-2665 2.40GHz, 20M Cache, 8.0GT/s QPI, Turbo, 8C, 115W, DDR3-1600MHz 
Risers with up to 6, x8 PCIe Slots + 1, x16 PCIe Slot 
2.5" Chassis with up to 16 Hard Drives 
Bezel 
Performance Optimized 
1333 MHz RDIMMs 
32GB RDIMM, 1333 MHz, Low Volt, Quad Rank, x4 
Heat Sink for PowerEdge R720 and R720xd 
DIMM Blanks for Systems with 2 Processors 
Intel Xeon E5-2665 2.40GHz, 20M Cache, 8.0GT/s QPI, Turbo, 8C, 115W, DDR3-1600MHz 
VFlash, 8GB SD Card for iDRAC Enterprise 
500GB, SATA, 2.5-in, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive (Hot-plug) 
PERC H710 Integrated RAID Controller, 512MB NV Cache 
16X DVD+/-RW Drive SATA 
Dual, Hot-plug, Redundant Power Supply (1+1), 750W 
2M Rack Power Cord C13/C14 12A 
Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb Network Daughter Card 
ReadyRails Sliding Rails Without Cable Management Arm 
RAID 1 for H710p, H710, H310 Controllers 
iDRAC7 Enterprise 

also:

PV MD3200i External iSCSI RAID 12
Bays Array with Dual Controllers (4
Ports per Controller)

PowerVault MD3200i Bezel 
4TB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 6Gbps 3.5in Hot-plug Hard Drive x 12 
Redundant Power Supply (2 PSU) 600W 
Spare Power Cord 2M 
Rapid Rack Rails for Dell or other Square Hole Rack 

all in all the server and hard drive hardware came to around &#8364;28,000!!!

so how would you rate this hardware in your opinion to do the job im talking about???

1 to 10 (1 being unable to perform)

lastly - could we get a lesser server for smaller VM's and a monster for the big VM's

looking for any help on this please
thanks for your time in reading this

PK


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## zx10guy (Mar 30, 2008)

So let me preface this with a clarification of my experience with VM environments. I have done some but don't feel I've done enough at the enterprise level to be a full on expert. I have managed a VMware environment at my previous job and I have two VMware hosts running in my home lab right now.

To start off with, the VM deployments I've seen and have been on the periphery seem to emphasize more memory than full on brute force processing power. In my current environment, I have a Dell C6100 server running my VM environment on ESXi 4.1. The two sleds in the C6100 have 2 quad core Xeon X5560 processors with each core at 2.8 GHz. The memory on each of the sleds is 48 GB and I think I have 6 300GB 10k RPM 2.5" SAS drives per sled configured for RAID I think RAID 10 or 5/6. Can't remember now without having to punt the server and get into the RAID controller BIOS.

My current stats reporting from Solarwinds in this setup is on one sled, I'm using 5% of the available CPU resources and 37% of the available memory resources with 10 VMs configured but 5 running. The other sled reports back with 3% of CPU load and 48% of memory load with 12 VMs configured and 7 running. Some of the VMs do constantly put up some loading on the physical host server some don't as I don't tap into those VMs often. An example of this are the Juniper SA and SonicWall EX SRA SSL VPN VM appliances. I use these off and on but not constantly. Based on my stats, memory is more important. Now again it all depends on what your prospective customers will be running on their provisioned VMs.

As far as the recommendation from Dell, it seems about right. They have set you up with an external DAS enclosure for more storage capacity when it comes to setting up the VMware datastore. It looks like this is a quote for just one server and drive shelf. I think you really need to consider two identical level servers so that would mean probably spending 56,000 euros. The reason I say this is since you're providing hosting services, you need to factor in the ability to do some load balancing and fault tolerance. You can spread the number of hosted VMs across two servers which will give you the ability to have some extra headroom on each server. If a particular VM is starting to hog resources on its assigned physical host, you can do a VMotion of other less resource intensive VMs to the other server to try to maintain even performance. The other reason is if you have to bring down one physical host for routine maintenance. You can VMotion all the hosted VMs to the other server do the maintenance on the server and then move the VMs back.

Personally, if I were you, I would consider moving away from the DAS enclosure setup and go with a SAN. This will give you proper performance and the ability to grow your storage environment without the hard limitations of a direct attached storage solution. But going with a SAN solution is probably going to make you pass out due to the additional costs. But if you're really looking to host 180 VMs, this is the only way to go. The nice part of doing a SAN is you can carve up the available storage and share it among many other physical servers. You don't have to do a one dedicated shelf per server model which often times locks in free storage space to specific servers which may or may not use them and can't be made available for other servers to use. I would suggest going with an iSCSI solution as the learning curve and hardware infrastructure is much less than a fiber channel solution. I've worked with both and can say if you've never gotten your hands dirty with fiber channel, you're going to be in for a steep learning curve.

As I said previously, this project is going to be a big undertaking and is the reason why there are only specific companies out there doing it. In theory, I can probably be a hosting service right now with the equipment I have in my home lab. I would just have to bump up my provisioned ISP circuit to accommodate the demands of being a hosting provider. But I don't want the headaches.

And lost in this discussion is the other important component of this infrastructure.....network hardware.

Oh and have you priced out what it will cost to obtain the appropriate VMware licensing? You might be in for another instance of sticker/price shock. VMware at the enterprise level is not cheap and many organizations are struggling with keeping up the licensing costs.


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## PK-her0 (Sep 17, 2007)

no we will look at that real soon (VMware licensing) thanks again for all the info...very interesting


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## GaltJ (Mar 9, 2013)

What are you doing for 24/7 tech support?


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## PK-her0 (Sep 17, 2007)

we will have staff in place...


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