Adding a processor to a DELL server?

Barack Obama

Hi

We have a DELL server in work and its struggling like crazy with some applications. I’m hoping that adding a 2nd processor will fix the problem (it won’t be a waste – otherwise a new server will be purchased to share the load). Is is a simple matter of purchasing the processor and fitting it or does it have to be configured to get it working?

First of all I guess, I hope the server has a slot for a 2nd processor! It’s a Dell PowerEdge 840 Tower and here’s the info for the existing processor from Belarc Advisor –
1.87 gigahertz Intel Xeon
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
2048 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (2 total)
Not hyper-threaded

Any advice greatly appreciated!!

swampgas

Barack Obama wrote: »

Hi

We have a DELL server in work and its struggling like crazy with some applications. I’m hoping that adding a 2nd processor will fix the problem (it won’t be a waste – otherwise a new server will be purchased to share the load). Is is a simple matter of purchasing the processor and fitting it or does it have to be configured to get it working?

First of all I guess, I hope the server has a slot for a 2nd processor! It’s a Dell PowerEdge 840 Tower and here’s the info for the existing processor from Belarc Advisor –
1.87 gigahertz Intel Xeon
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
2048 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (2 total)
Not hyper-threaded

Any advice greatly appreciated!!

Are you sure that the server is CPU constrained and not Memory constrained?

What are the long term plans - maybe you should consider a new server with something like VMware ESXi, and give yourself some flexibility in the future.

Barack Obama

swampgas wrote: »

Are you sure that the server is CPU constrained and not Memory constrained?

What are the long term plans - maybe you should consider a new server with something like VMware ESXi, and give yourself some flexibility in the future.

Thanks for the quick reply Swampgas!

The server is running SBS 2003 and it has 4GB of RAM, so no room for expansion there. It's acting as a file server, running Exchange and Symantec security products such as mail scanner, anti-spam and anti-virus. I did some reading on the processes that were spiking the processors time and they are mainly Symantec. The answer unfortunatly is get a more powerful server!

So, the quick fix is add a 2nd processor (I hope!). The long-term (and expensive) fix would be to buy a new beefy server, install Exchange 2007 on it and move all mail servcies onto it. The existing server can then be rebuilt and used as a dedicated file server. VMware might be an unnecessary level of complexity.

swampgas

Barack Obama wrote: »

Thanks for the quick reply Swampgas!

The server is running SBS 2003 and it has 4GB of RAM, so no room for expansion there. It's acting as a file server, running Exchange and Symantec security products such as mail scanner, anti-spam and anti-virus. I did some reading on the processes that were spiking the processors time and they are mainly Symantec. The answer unfortunatly is get a more powerful server!

So, the quick fix is add a 2nd processor (I hope!). The long-term (and expensive) fix would be to buy a new beefy server, install Exchange 2007 on it and move all mail servcies onto it. The existing server can then be rebuilt and used as a dedicated file server. VMware might be an unnecessary level of complexity.

I worked in a similar environment, and it scared the living daylights out of me. Basically all your eggs are in one basket. I would be very keen to get another server up and running before messing around with the one doing all the work.

Suppose (worst case scanario) while adding the CPU, the motherboard gets damaged? What's your backup plan?

lynchie

Barack Obama wrote: »

Hi

We have a DELL server in work and its struggling like crazy with some applications. I’m hoping that adding a 2nd processor will fix the problem (it won’t be a waste – otherwise a new server will be purchased to share the load). Is is a simple matter of purchasing the processor and fitting it or does it have to be configured to get it working?

First of all I guess, I hope the server has a slot for a 2nd processor! It’s a Dell PowerEdge 840 Tower and here’s the info for the existing processor from Belarc Advisor –
1.87 gigahertz Intel Xeon
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
2048 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (2 total)
Not hyper-threaded

Any advice greatly appreciated!!

The 840 is a single socket Server, so no adding a second CPU to it im afraid.

Barack Obama

swampgas wrote: »

I worked in a similar environment, and it scared the living daylights out of me. Basically all your eggs are in one basket. I would be very keen to get another server up and running before messing around with the one doing all the work.

Suppose (worst case scanario) while adding the CPU, the motherboard gets damaged? What's your backup plan?

Powered down the server at lunch and had a look - no room for a 2nd processor. Oh well

So, a new server is required! Just taking a quick look at the Dell.ie website, the cheapest tower that allows for two processors is a PowerEdge 410. Would be looking at a dual Xeon 2.4GHz with 24GB ram (the other option os 6GB but there's only €600 in the difference!).

Anyone got any experience with these and are they recommended?

SouperComputer

How many clients is this serving? What kind of slow response are you seeing? At a glance the hardware should be up to the job. I cant imagine it being very busy CPU wise (under normal circumstaces). How are HD and LAN utilization?

Regardless of CPU TBH, I'd scrap Symantec and get something from Eset on there. I dont know about the specifics of the server, but maybe you could pop a quad in place of the dual core. Really though I think its band aid fix, dig deeper and find the bottleneck

swampgas

SouperComputer wrote: »

How many clients is this serving? What kind of slow response are you seeing? At a glance the hardware should be up to the job. I cant imagine it being very busy CPU wise (under normal circumstaces). How are HD and LAN utilization?

Regardless of CPU TBH, I'd scrap Symantec and get something from Eset on there. I dont know about the specifics of the server, but maybe you could pop a quad in place of the dual core. Really though I think its band aid fix, dig deeper and find the bottleneck

+1

You might want to download some tools to get a quick idea of what is going on. E.g. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals

ressem

Agree that you need to look at what is going on.
For example is the disk queue reported by windows performance monitor consistently above 4? That might indicate that some process is demanding too much from the disk indicating a problem with a service.

What's the mail queue in Exchange like? Any chance that your computer is acting as a mail relay for external spammers, due to an unclicked checkbox?

Do processes like task manager take an unusual amount of CPU time? A Kaspersky server AV update malfunctioned on me last year causing all processes to use about 10 times the normal CPU time.

And as mentioned, how many people (and iphones), and what sort of disk setup has the PC? That's not an old server and I would think that if the number of clients is under 24 or so and the disk system is OK, that the CPU shouldn't usually be the bottleneck.

Capt'n Midnight

Hate the way a lot of Dell servers need a voltage regulator or other daughter board installed before you can a Second CPU :mad:

It's been a while since I added a CPU to a server. Was fun and games getting the HAL changed on older versions of windows to actually recognise the processor. Point being you may have to software changes before a second CPU could be used ( do SBS components like SQL allow the use of both CPU's or do you have to assign them to one and try and offload everything else to the other )

swampgas

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

It's been a while since I added a CPU to a server. Was fun and games getting the HAL changed on older versions of windows to actually recognise the processor. Point being you may have to software changes before a second CPU could be used ( do SBS components like SQL allow the use of both CPU's or do you have to assign them to one and try and offload everything else to the other )

I also seem to remember that switching from the SMP HAL back to the Uniprocessor one is a bit of a nightmare - so if you needed to take the second CPU back out you could have issues.

To go off topic slightly, this reminds me of how glad I am that I work mostly with VMs these days rather than physical servers.