Today’s small and medium businesses need flexible and cost-efficient server platforms to support their application and overall business growth needs. They also need to keep human resource expenses in check and tend to have lean technical teams with many responsibilities. In contrast to large enterprise customers who get a lot of support from vendors and VARs in return for high volume sales, the SMB and midsize companies are often left on their own to select, configure, and even install their own technology platforms. Further compounding the challenge, many server solutions are not fully integrated and the needed support can come from the hardware manufacturer, the software vendor, and from the OS vendor who all coordinate precise design requirements for the platform to handle the workload. This scenario often leaves the SMB to design a custom server solution on their own or settle for a sub-optimal solution.
As a Titanium level Dell Technologies partner, Mainline can assist enterprise, midsized and SMB businesses with selecting the right PowerEdge server and coordinating the design process to best meet your needs. But for those who are adventurous and want to tackle this on their own, here are some of the steps our engineers take when helping clients select the optimal Dell PowerEdge server:
Application, Workload, and Recovery Objectives
Let’s start with the application(s) and the workload characteristics. Mainline engineers will first help to determine the minimum requirements based on manufacturer recommendations. Then, we can run benchmark performance tests to help identify the peak workload. With those results, we often discuss the business needs for disaster recovery and data protection. Our team can help assess the balance of cost versus recovery point and recovery time objectives. Having the overall design in mind, we can start to look at the features of the server(s) required to build the reference architecture.
Features to Maximize Performance
There are at least 15 major components to choose when configuring modern servers. With each new Dell server generation (and Dell already has 15 generations), there seems to be at least one more feature choice to make. While we used to watch the Moore’s Law doubling crank turn every 2 years (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-moores-law-in-action-1971-2019/) , we’ve entered a period of slower growth in the number of transistors since 2020. New server components have become just as important as the processor to help boost performance for unique workloads. Whether that be Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), Non-Volatile Memory (NVMe), Persistent Memory, Dell Boss Disks or Flash storage drives, they all can contribute to a server design with far fewer bottlenecks than ever before. In this step of the process, Mainline can help select the features needed to maximize performance for the workload.
Growth Considerations
Growth is also a difficult decision to make when planning a new environment. Without a growth curve with data points, Mainline may lean on experience, rule-of-thumb, and manufacturer recommendations. Based on this added input we can decide on the chassis (tower, rack, or blade) that would be best given the installation site, growth, performance, and connectivity required. Even though any chassis type will work, they may affect software licensing as rack servers versus tower/desktop size may be higher in cost.
More Information
Having a strategic partnership and close working relationship with Dell Technologies, Mainline can assist enterprise, midsize and SMB businesses with selecting the right PowerEdge server for their needs. Additionally, our experts can help you make the most of available promotions. With a scalable architecture, intelligent automation, and integrated security Dell PowerEdge offers end-to-end server solutions that work together seamlessly – from the core, to the edge, to the cloud.
For more information, contact your Mainline Account Executive directly, or contact us here.
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