Summary

With the launch of the PowerEdge T360 and R360, we decided to put these systems to the test against their predecessors, the T350 and R360. Our benchmarking revealed:

The rest of this document gives more details about the T360 & R360 and describes the testing behind these impressive results.

PowerEdge T360 and R360 Specs

Dell Technologies just announced the next servers to join the PowerEdge family: the T360 and R360. They are cost-effective 1-socket servers designed for small to medium businesses with growing compute demands. They can be deployed in the office, the near-edge, or in a typical data analytic environment.

The biggest differentiator between the T360 and R360 is form factor. The T360 is a tower server that can fit under a desk or even in a storage closet, while maintaining office-friendly acoustics. The R360, on the other hand, is a traditional 1U rack server. Both servers support the newly launched Intel® Xeon® E-series CPUs, 1 NVIDIA A2 GPU, as well as DDR5 memory, NVMe BOSS, and PCIe Gen5 I/O ports. Read this paper for more details about new features and CPU performance gains compared to prior-gen servers.

Testing Methodology, Configurations & Results

In our Dell Technologies labs, we evaluated four different industry-relevant benchmarks on the PowerEdge T350 and T360 servers using open-source Phoronix Test Suites.[1] The table below details the configurations for each system under test. While the drive configuration is the same, the PowerEdge T360 was configured with the latest DDR5 memory and the corresponding next-generation Intel CPU with equal number of cores. 

Although we tested the PowerEdge T360, similar results can be expected for the PowerEdge R360 with the same configuration below. To replicate our results, see the Appendix of this report for the terminal commands to run each of the Phoronix Test Suites described in the following sections. We tested in a Linux Ubuntu Desktop environment, version 22.04.3 

1. Testing Configuration

Database Benchmarks

Businesses of any size place great importance on efficiently and securely storing large amounts data. It should come as no surprise that a key workload for both the R360 and T360 is database hosting. 

We first evaluated database performance on the T360 and T350 using PostgreSQL, an open-source SQL relational database that is popular with small to medium businesses. The benchmark reports database read/write performance in number of transactions per second. Figures 1 and 2 below show two different test configurations, one with a scaling factor 1,000 and the other with scaling factor 10,000. Scaling factor is a multiplier for the number of rows in each table. 

In both configurations, as the number of clients (or number of users) increases, so does transactions per second. While both the T360 and T350 follow this trend, the T360 handles up to 50% more transactions per second than the T350 [1]. 

1. PostgreSQL performance, Scaling Factor 1000

2. PostgreSQL performance, Scaling Factor 10,000

We see comparable results when testing performance with MariaDB, another open-source relational database. In this case, as the number of clients increases, the T360 handles a greater number of queries per second compared to the T350. At its peak, the T360 demonstrates an 11% performance increase over the T350 [2]. 

3. Queries per Second, T350 vs T360

The performance gains are impressive when you consider both servers were configured very similarly with the same drives and varied only in CPU and memory generations. These results also point to the T360 as better equipped to scale with heavier database workloads as number of clients increases and more compute is required. 

Web Server Benchmark

Web hosting is a common, and critical, workload for entry-level servers. Organizations count on their websites to run efficiently, securely, and handle increasingly heavy traffic loads. 

We evaluated web server performance on the T360 and T350 with Apache HTTP Server, which is a completely free, open-source, and widely used web server software. The benchmark reports the number of requests handled per second with a set number of concurrent clients, or visitors. The figure below illustrates that as the number of concurrent clients increases, the T360 is able to handle up to 160% more requests per second than the T350. 

4. Requests per Second, T350 vs T360

Data Analytics Benchmark

With the growing amount of data available to all businesses, there is ample opportunity to leverage data-driven insights. Although large-scale data processing requires immense compute power, the PowerEdge R360 and T360 are more than up for the challenge. 

We evaluated data analytics performance on the T360 and T350 using Apache Spark, which is an open-source analytics engine built for managing big data. The benchmark reports the time it takes to complete different Spark operations in seconds. As illustrated in the figure below, the T360 is up to 47% faster than the T350 for this workload [4]. 

5. Time to Complete Test, T350 vs T360

Conclusion

Whether it is database workloads, web hosting, or data analytics, both the PowerEdge T360 & R360 exhibit impressive performance gains over the prior generation servers. There is a clear winner in this battle. Explore and read more about the benefits of upgrading to a PowerEdge server at PowerEdge Servers | Dell USA

References

• Phoronix Test Suite - Linux Testing & Benchmarking Platform, Automated Testing, Open-Source Benchmarking (phoronix-test-suite.com)

Legal Disclosures

[1] Based on November 2023 Dell labs testing subjecting the PowerEdge T350 and T360 tower servers to a PostgreSQL benchmark with scaling factor 1000, 1000 clients, and both read and write operations. Results were obtained via a Phoronix test suite. Similar results can be expected comparing the PowerEdge R360 and R350 with the same system configurations.

[2] Based on November 2023 Dell labs testing subjecting the PowerEdge T350 and T360 tower servers to a MariaDB benchmark with 8192 clients via a Phoronix test suite. Similar results can be expected comparing the PowerEdge R360 and R350 with the same system configurations.

[3] Based on November 2023 Dell labs testing subjecting the PowerEdge T350 and T360 tower servers to an Apache HTTP Server benchmark with 20 concurrent users, via Phoronix Test Suite. Actual results will vary. Similar results can be expected comparing the PowerEdge R360 and R350 with the same system configurations.

[4] Based on November 2023 Dell labs testing subjecting the PowerEdge T350 and T360 tower servers to an Apache Spark benchmark via a Phoronix test suite. Benchmark results were obtained during a run with 40000000 rows and 1000 Partitions to calculate the Pi benchmark using Dataframe. Actual results will vary. Similar results can be expected comparing the PowerEdge R360 and R350 with the same system configurations.

Appendix

2. Phoronix Test Suite Commands

Note: If you do not have the required dependencies for each test, they will automatically be installed after running the command above. You will be prompted to enter “Y” for yes to kick-off the installation before testing resumes. To download Phoronix Test Suite visit Phoronix Test Suite - Linux Testing & Benchmarking Platform, Automated Testing, Open-Source Benchmarking (phoronix-test-suite.com)