Airbozo
10-26-2011, 03:45 PM
OK, so I never thought I wold have this problem, but hey, I needed a new challenge.
So I have a customer that is spec'ing out a new box to analyze multiple HD streams. They want to use one high powered system to analyze as many streams as possible. Cue the Quad processor SuperMicro 1U system...
http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/8016/SYS-8016B-6.cfm?SAS=N
Ok ,so we got 4 Xeon E7-4850 (10 core) samples from Intel (gotta love freebies!), and loaded them in the system. I checked M$'s recommendation chart for OS's and it shows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition supports up to 4 processors. Install away, load drivers, go into bios, enable hyper threading and POW! 80 cores! Cool!
Boot into windows, check Device manager, 80 cores! nice! Open up task manager, 64 cores!?!? HUH?!?! Time to call M$.
After an hour or so on the phone, my rep eventually tells me that Standard Edition only supports 64 cores and we have to upgrade to Enterprise Edition (which is almost twice the cost). I ask for the data sheet that indicates the cores supported but they were unable to provide me with any document that states SE is only able to see 64 cores and instead send me the document showing 4 socket support. Nothing about cores or logical procs. Hmmm...
I have to get the customer up and running so they can start testing so I find out the upgrade steps and am impressed. In order to upgrade to EE, all we have to do is provide a new key and tell the system we want EE. One command line and 2 reboots later, EE is running with 80 cores...
That should be able to handle 24 HD streams.... We will see.
Edit: Forgot to add that STandard Edition will handle 4 sockets and 64 cores. EE will handle 8 sockets and 256 cores. Data Center will handle 64 sockets and who knows how many cores... (SGI has Data Center running on one of it's super computers with 128 cores scalable to 256. The largest server 2008 install)
So I have a customer that is spec'ing out a new box to analyze multiple HD streams. They want to use one high powered system to analyze as many streams as possible. Cue the Quad processor SuperMicro 1U system...
http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/8016/SYS-8016B-6.cfm?SAS=N
Ok ,so we got 4 Xeon E7-4850 (10 core) samples from Intel (gotta love freebies!), and loaded them in the system. I checked M$'s recommendation chart for OS's and it shows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition supports up to 4 processors. Install away, load drivers, go into bios, enable hyper threading and POW! 80 cores! Cool!
Boot into windows, check Device manager, 80 cores! nice! Open up task manager, 64 cores!?!? HUH?!?! Time to call M$.
After an hour or so on the phone, my rep eventually tells me that Standard Edition only supports 64 cores and we have to upgrade to Enterprise Edition (which is almost twice the cost). I ask for the data sheet that indicates the cores supported but they were unable to provide me with any document that states SE is only able to see 64 cores and instead send me the document showing 4 socket support. Nothing about cores or logical procs. Hmmm...
I have to get the customer up and running so they can start testing so I find out the upgrade steps and am impressed. In order to upgrade to EE, all we have to do is provide a new key and tell the system we want EE. One command line and 2 reboots later, EE is running with 80 cores...
That should be able to handle 24 HD streams.... We will see.
Edit: Forgot to add that STandard Edition will handle 4 sockets and 64 cores. EE will handle 8 sockets and 256 cores. Data Center will handle 64 sockets and who knows how many cores... (SGI has Data Center running on one of it's super computers with 128 cores scalable to 256. The largest server 2008 install)