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Ian Ringrose
Asked: 2014-02-05 05:19:35 +0800 CST

Why is it so hard to get servers with Lot of Ram, but few cores?

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SQL server has a very high per core license cost, but for a lot of workloads benefits more from lots of RAM. his is now even more of the case with in-memory tables.

Even if a server with 4 cores cost more than a server with 16 cores, it may still be worth it for the saved license costs!

It seems to be that number of cores is now the new meaningless marketing number.

Given how cheap RAM is, I don’t consider 384GB to be a lot of Ram!

Update, thanks for everyone’s input, I have also just found Selecting a Processor for SQL Server 2014 on sqlperformance.com that covers the options well.

sql-server

4 Answers

  1. Well, first of all you can always disable cores in the server's BIOS if you really want, or buy a server with a specifically lower core-count (HP etc. do make them) but one of the main reasons why it is 'so hard to get servers with lots of RAM but few cores' is because there's a very small market for them.

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  2. Best Answer

    This is quite possible. An example I have is an application I support where core count is not as important as single-threaded performance. So I have these systems optimized for the application:

    These are current-generation Sandy/Ivy-Bridge CPUs, so I specify Intel E5-2643 quad-core and E5-2643 v2 hex-core processors running at 3.30GHz and 3.50GHz, respectively, to handle the workload. The servers accommodate the same amount of RAM as higher-core-count CPUs.

    You also have access to the Intel E5-2637 (and v2) processor, which is available in 2 and 4 cores.

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  3. I find several 'mistakes' in your question.

    1. Where can't you find servers with good memory amounts? Of course manufacturers propose low ram solutions, to keep initial prices low. They all propose upgrades, at a price. Manufacturers certified memory is expensive though. Even most economic to mainstream servers nowadays will accept over 32GB of ram. Dual socket servers work well with just one cpu too.
    2. It's unlikely that with all that memory busy with data you'll want just a few cores to serve a limited number of clients. If you have so little clients, it's unlikely that you need the extra speed of keeping so much inside your memory.
    3. Microsoft doesn't only sell per-core license. It also got Server+CALs licenses. Please see this link. You choice depends on your conditions.
    4. The future is virtual machines, sometimes even cloud based. A per-core license adapts very well to it, as in virtual machines you allocate cores, not cpus. Nowadays servers tend to have plenty of processing power; put a virtualization hypervisor on your machine and allocate just the resources (disk,cores,ram) you need. Upgrade in minutes if needed. Or use the same machine to host other stuff.
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  4. Why don't you run the database server in the virtual machine with the appropriate number of cores allocated? As a bonus it will be more wieldy to administer.

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