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The trend in the processor industry has been CPU models with increasingly more processor cores. This has made it possible for the PowerEdge R750 server with high core count CPUs to be a platform for database consolidation. This scenario will explore three possible PowerEdge R750 CPU configurations and include VMware vSphere virtualization.
Support for Oracle products running on VMware virtualized environments was announced at Oracle Open World 2019. Dell has used VMware vSphere virtualization in many of its validated solutions found on the Dell Technologies Info Hub for Oracle Solutions. Virtualizing today’s high core count CPUs on VMware vSphere, customers can achieve new levels of database consolidation.
The Intel Xeon Platinum 8360 is a 3rd Generation Ice Lake processor that is Intel’s current flagship model. With this platinum processor the R750 can be configured with two 8380 CPUs having a total of 80 physical cores and 160 virtual cores. In terms of processing power that should enable greater consolidation of Oracle databases per server. The base frequency of 2.3 GHz combined with a large 60 MB CPU cache will further enable database consolidation.
With four fewer processors and a slight improvement in base frequency is the platinum 8360 CPU. This 8360 processor has 36 physical cores and 72 virtual cores with threading. With both sockets populated in the server there will be a total of 72 physical cores and 144 virtual cores. The base frequency is 2.4 GHz, and the CPU cache is 54 MB.
The final CPU listed in the Table 3 is the Intel Xeon Platinum 8358 processor. This processor has 32 physical cores and 64 virtual cores. With both sockets populated in the server that is a total of 64 physical cores and 128 virtual cores. The base frequency takes a slight step up to 2.6 GHz and the CPU cache size is 48 MB.
Intel Xeon | Platinum 8380 | Platinum 8360 | Platinum 8358 |
Total cores | 40 | 36 | 32 |
Total threads | 80 | 72 | 64 |
Base frequency | 2.3 GHz | 2.4 GHz | 2.6 GHz |
Maximum turbo frequency | 3.4 GHz | 3.5 GHz | 3.4 GHz |
Cache | 60 MB | 54 MB | 48 MB |
In VMware’s Hybrid Cloud Best Practices Guide for Oracle Workloads are best practices we still use in Dell engineering labs today. In Dell engineering labs incremental testing is used to determine the right size for the virtualized database. The approach used is to start with fewer processors and add more if needed. This approach has two benefits:
Depending upon the database density of the consolidation system the memory configuration most likely will require greater capacity. If this is the case LRDIMMs with the 8 TB of maximum capacity should be considered. A few consolidation guidelines followed in Dell engineering labs include:
How aggressively to consolidate databases on fewer servers partly depends on the importance of the application to the database. Generally, the more critical the database, the less aggressive the consolidation as performance is paramount. Production systems and near production systems like quality assurance are examples of virtualized databases that should be aggressively consolidated.
Non-production systems for development and test can be more aggressively consolidated. The degree of consolidation is determined by factors like performance, maximizing resource utilization, and lowering overall costs. The PowerEdge R750 provides several CPU configurations to enable a wide variety of consolidation scenarios. From the IntelÒ XeonÒ Platinum 8360 CPUs that when fully populated offer the business 160 virtual processor through the R8358 with 128 virtual processors.