Hardware specs: GHz vs. Cores

[rpoehlmann]

Dear OMERO-Team,

we are going to buy new hardware to replace our existing OMERO server.

May I ask what's your general recommendation regarding CPU: higher CPU frequency with less cores or larger number of cores instead?

Thanks a lot for your support.

Best regards,
-Rainer

[manics]

Hi Rainer

We've got some docs on our recommended server configurations:
https://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/sup ... ments.html
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7811&p=15760&hilit=300#p15747

OMERO has several components so multiple cores are useful up to a point (around 4-8), beyond that you're better off going for a higher clock speed.

Simon

[rpoehlmann]

Hi Simon,

thanks for the reply.

We've got some docs on our recommended server configurations:
https://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/sup ... ments.html

yep, I am aware of this document. However, the requirements described there are so low that any recently bought HW will easily exceed them

https://www.openmicroscopy.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7811&p=15760&hilit=300#p15747

That's of great help, goes in the direction we are aiming at.

OMERO has several components so multiple cores are useful up to a point (around 4-8), beyond that you're better off going for a higher clock speed.

Even better, great info! Then I will definitively spec a system with focus on higher clock speed instead of large no. of cores.

Best regards,
-Rainer

[manics]

If it's useful feel free to post your proposed specification here, and we can give it a quick check.

Simon

[rpoehlmann]

So, the idea would be something like this:

• dual Intel Xeon Processor E5-2643 v3 6C 3.4GHz 20MB 2133MHz 135W
  -OR-
• dual Intel Xeon Processor E5-2637 v3 4C 3.5GHz 15MB 2133MHz 135W
  Depends on the pricing we will get, let's see what will give best value for money
• 256GB RAM
• 2 x 200GB SSD RAID1 for OS
• 2 x 400GB SSD RAID1 for PostgreSQL DB
• 2 x 1.2 TB SAS RAID1 for scratch, log files, etc.
• 10GbE connectivity to the NFS volume having the OMERO datastore, we might replace this in the future with Infinniband 40Gb connectivity

Hopefully, we should be able to survive another 3-4 years with the new server

Thanks,
-Rainer

[manics]

Hi Rainer

Thanks for your feedback on the docs- we'll update them for the next release.

Your spec generally looks good. The only thing to be aware of is that NFS can have file locking problems. If you're running your existing OMERO server with NFS and have enough experience to work through any future problems you should be OK, otherwise it'd be worth considering a SAN or some other local storage.

Edit: One more thing: to future proof the server you'll also want a recent OS, e.g. Centos 7.

Simon

[rpoehlmann]

Hi Simon,

Your spec generally looks good. The only thing to be aware of is that NFS can have file locking problems. If you're running your existing OMERO server with NFS and have enough experience to work through any future problems you should be OK, otherwise it'd be worth considering a SAN or some other local storage.

Should be fine, so far we had no problems. If we will later upgrade towards Infiniband, we might also consider to provide the OMERO data storage natively from a central GPFS file system (the IBM high-performance parallel FS). But let's see how things evolve ...

Edit: One more thing: to future proof the server you'll also want a recent OS, e.g. Centos 7.

Totally agreed, HW migration will definitively go along with upgrage to CentOS7

Thanks a lot for your help, best,
-Rainer