I want to put together a server that will be dedicated to KVM virtual machines (Openstack Compute box).
I had been planning on getting a single cpu AMD EPYC.
Then I watched a recent video by Bryan Lunduke and the Pogo Linux guy who suggested Intel’s newest SP is better for VMs.
Can anyone elaborate on why I should get which of these two CPU architectures specifically for a VM box?
My experience with KVM on the Ryzen architecture has generally been positive, except for the fact that enabling Nested Page Tables causes a huge performance penalty with certain applications like IOMMU passthrough and a few others. I’d do some research, but if you’re not going to be affected by the NPT bug, then EPYC would probably be a good option in terms of price/performance.
Didn’t they fix that?
I appreciate all who replied; however, I am not asking whether KVM works well on EPYC, what I would like to know is why a guy who specializes in cpu deployment for business would favor the new Intel SP cpu over the EPYC for KVM usage?
You might have to ask the guy who specializes in CPU deployment for business. And even then, take it with a grain of salt. Elitism is one of the reasons AMD didn’t gain much market share in the 1999-2006 era when they were mopping the floor with Intel. Elitism is one of the reasons it was cool, until very recently, to deploy servers with a RAID 5 disk configuration. Elitism is why a veteran developer made a nonsensical blog post about condemning noop in favor of direct disk access when the data he himself posted was contrary to the conclusions he was trying to draw.
Elitism keeps people stuck in their own personal rut. Where Intel vs AMD is concerned, there’s a lot of elitism. And frankly, even going up to mid market businesses, it rarely matters. Build whatever is most cost effective, or whatever feels safer, depending on what your goals are and what your wallet will allow.