LRDIMMs, RDIMMs, and Supermicro's Latest Twin
by Johan De Gelas on August 3, 2012 4:45 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Intel
- Samsung
- Xeon
- Cloud Computing
- Supermicro
Value for Money: LRDIMMs
Superior response times, slightly better energy consumption: it does not matter if the price ain't right. Last year, a server filled with 32GB LRDIMMs cost about the same as a decent sports car. That makes LRDIMMs only attractive to those that buy servers to run software with huge licensing fees.
What is the situation anno 2012? We decided to scan the market and jotted down an overview of the prices that we could find. We checked out both the OEMs and the rest of the market. For example, the IBM X3750M4 can make use of 16GB LRDIMMs and RDIMMS. The HP DL380 servers support 32GB LRDIMMs, 16GB HCDIMMs, and 16GB RDIMMs.
| DIMM price comparison | ||||||
| DIMM type | Product number | Remark | Price | |||
| 1333MHz 32GB RDIMM | Dell | In Dell's R720 | $2000 | |||
| 1333MHz 32GB LRDIMM | Dell | In Dell's R720 | $3800 | |||
| 1333MHz 32GB LRDIMM | HP 647885-B21 | HP memory | $2004 | |||
| 1333MHz 32GB LRDIMM | Samsung M386B4G70BM0-YH9 | various websites | $1100-1250 | |||
| 1333MHz 32GB RDIMM | Samsung M393B4G70AM0-CF8Q5 | various websites | $1400-1800 | |||
| 1600MHz 16GB RDIMM | HP 672631-B21 | HP memory | $455 | |||
| 1333MHz 16GB HC DIMM | HP 678279-B21 | HP exclusive option | $760 | |||
| 1333MHz 16GB RDIMM | IBM 49Y1562 | In IBM X3750M4 server | $435 | |||
| 1333MHz 16GB LRDIMM | IBM 49Y1566 | In IBM X3750M4 server | $324 | |||
| 1333MHz 16GB RDIMM LV | Samsung M393B2G70BH0-CH9 | Certified on Supermicro's Twin | $342 | |||
| 1333MHz 16GB LRDIMM LV |
Samsung M386B2G70DM0-YH9 |
Tested LR DIMM | $467 | |||
| 1333MHz 16GB LRDIMM LV | CT16G3ELSLQ41339 | Crucial LR DIMM | $277 | |||
| 1333MHz 8GB RDIMMs | Samsung M393B1K70BM1-CH9 | various websites | $124 | |||
LRDIMMs are very well adopted in the market; HP, Dell and IBM offer them in various servers. However, the way the technology is adopted depends very much on the vendor. IBM offers 16GB LR DIMMs and 16GB RDIMMs, while Dell and HP only offer 32GB LRDIMMs.
Dell demands a huge premium for LRDIMM: $3800 instead of $2000. There can be no more than eight 32GB RDIMMs. You can only populate all 12 slots if you use 32GB LRDIMMs. The end result is that you get only 50% more capacity for twice the investment, which is not really an attractive proposition. For some reason, server vendors like to slow down progress instead of supporting it. Another example are the ridiculous premiums that server vendors demand for using relatively slow and outdated SSDs in their servers.
16GB LRDIMMs are competitively priced, but they are not really interesting in most servers except in the IBM X3750M4. In all other servers, you can get faster 1600MHz dual ranked RDIMMs, which offer better performance at a lower power level: 16GB dual rank RDIMMs use half as many but twice as large memory chips than the quad ranked 16GB LRDIMMs. 16GB HCDIMMs seem to be priced even higher and probably offer a much worse performance per Watt ratio.
As far as we could see, HP does not offer any 32GB quad ranked RDIMMs at this point in time, so HP positiones the 32GB LRDIMM as the one and only high capacity option. The premium is significant but much more reasonable than Dell: about $2000 per DIMM. Nevertheless, this makes LRDIMMs only interesting for those people with huge software and hardware budgets.
Luckily we have Supermicro to put some price pressure on the tier one OEMs. Several resellers of Supermicro servers offer 32GB LRDIMMs for prices as "low" as $1100. Considering that typical 32GB quad ranked RDIMM parts cost at least 25% more and run at only 1066MHz, it looks like LRDIMMs really are the only attractive option for high capacity servers.
Most of you will probably go for the cheaper 8GB and 16GB parts. Notice however that 8GB parts start to lose their appeal. With prices hovering around $250-$400 and most servers being more memory limited than CPU limited, 16GB RDIMMs are a better option.
Total cost of acquisition is only one part of the overall cost story. If you are memory capacity limited, would it be interesting to invest in LRDIMMs? After all, running two LRDIMM equipped servers instead of four RDIMM servers is more energy efficient and you need to invest fewer in servers. We did a quick TCO study, but before we can do that we should decide on which server platform to choose. How does the latest Supermicro compare with other similar solutions?
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koinkoin - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
For HPC solutions I like the Dell C6220, dense, and with 2 or 4GB of memory per cpu core you get a good configuration in a 2U chassis for 4 servers.But for VMware, servers like the R720 give you more room to play with memory and IO slots.
Not counting that those dense server don’t offer the same level of management and user friendliness.
JohanAnandtech - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
A few thoughts:1. Do you still need lots of I/O slots now that we can consolidate a lot of gigabit Ethernets in Two 10GBe
2. Management: ok, a typical blade server can offer a bit more, but the typical remote management solutions that Supermicro now offers are not bad at all. We have been using them for several years now.
Can you elaborate what you expect from the management solution that you won't expect to see in a dense server?
alpha754293 - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
re: network consolidationNetwork consolidation comes at a cost premium. You can still argue that an IB QDR will give you better performance/bandwith, but a switch is $6k and other systems that don't have IB QDR built in, it's about $1k per NIC. Cables are at least $100 a piece.
If you can use it and justify the cost, sure. But GbE is cheap. REALLY REALLY cheap now that it's been in the consumer space for quite some time.
And there aren't too many cases when you might exceed GbE (even the Ansys guys suggest investing in better hardware rather than expensive interconnects). And that says a LOT.
re: management
I've never tried Supermicro's IMPI, but it looks to be pretty decent. Even if that doesn't work, you can also use 3rd party like logmein and that works quite well too! (Although not available for Linux, but there are Linux/UNIX options available out there as well).
Supermicro also has an even higher density version of this server (4x half-width, 1U DP blade node.)
JonBendtsen - Monday, August 6, 2012 - link
I have tried Supermicro IPMI, works nicely. I can power on/off the machine and let it boot from a .iso image I have on my laptop. This means that in case I have to boot from a rescue CD, then I do not even have to plug a CD drive into the machine. Everything can be done from my laptop, even when I am not in the office, or even the country.bobbozzo - Tuesday, August 7, 2012 - link
Can you access boot screens and the BIOS from the IPMI?For Linux, I use SSH (or VNC server), but when you've got memory or disk errors, etc., it's nice to see the BIOS screens.
Bob
phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, August 9, 2012 - link
Using either the web interface on the IPMI chip itself, or the IPMIView software from SuperMicro, you get full keyboard, mouse, console redirection. Meaning, you can view the POST, BIOS, pre-boot, boot, and console of the system.You can also configure the system to use a serial console, and configure the installed OS to use a serial console, and then connect to the serial console remotely using the ipmitool program.
The IPMI implementation in SuperMicro motherboards (at least the H8DG6/H8DGi series, which we use) is very nice. And stable. And useful. :)
ForeverAlone - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Only 128GB RAM? Unacceptable!Guspaz - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
It starts to matter more when you're pouring on the VMs. With two sockets there, you're talking 16 cores, or 32 threads. That's the kind of machine that can handle a rather large number of VMs, and with only 128GB of RAM, that would be the limitation regarding how many VMs you could stick on there. For example, if you wanted to have a dedicated thread per VM, you're down to only 4GB per VM, which is kind of low for a server.darking - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
I think the price on the webpage is wrong. or atleast it differs by market.i just checked the Danish and the British webstores, and the 32GB LRDIMMS are priced at around 2200$ not the 3800$ that the US webpage has.
JohanAnandtech - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
They probably changed it in the last few days as HP as lowered their price to $2000 a while ago. But when I checked, it was $3800