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VxBlock 1000 incorporates the latest Dell EMC storage arrays with compute servers and networking equipment from Cisco Systems and Dell EMC AMP management infrastructure. VxBlock 1000 provides the following benefits:
The following table outlines the compute, storage, and network resources that we used in our VxBlock 1000 testing:
Table 1. Compute, storage, and network resources used in the in-house-tested VxBlock 1000
Layer |
Resources |
Compute |
Cisco UCS B-Series and C-Series servers |
Storage |
PowerMax 8000 storage array |
Network
|
|
In the test configuration, we allocated two Cisco UCS B-Series M5 blade servers to support this use case. We dedicated one server to the SQL Server 2019 Enterprise Evaluation Edition database and the other to the Oracle 19c Enterprise Edition database. Dedicating a Cisco UCS B480 M5 blade server to each database optimizes licensing by limiting costs and enables us to test database consolidation. Both servers hosting the databases were identically configured with four CPUs and 1.5 TB of memory. Each CPU had 20 cores; therefore, 80 cores were available to each database server.
The VxBlock System 1000 includes a single PowerMax 8000 storage array that was used as the FC SAN storage to host both Oracle and SQL Server databases. The following table lists the storage array components, the maximum supported configuration, and the tested configuration:
Table 2. PowerMax 8000 components
Component |
Maximum supported configuration |
Tested configuration |
Number of bricks or engines |
8 |
2 |
Cache-system (raw) |
16 TB (with 2 TB engine) |
2 TB (1 TB per engine) |
Number of front-end I/O modules per array |
48 (6 per engine) |
8 |
16 Gbps FC host ports per array |
256 |
16 |
Number of NVMe flash drives |
288 |
40 |
The PowerMax 8000 with NVMe flash drives provides improvements in performance and parallelism that provide an ideal match for mixed database workloads. NVMe flash drives are significantly faster than traditional SATA solid-state drives (SSDs) and offer the ability to service more requests in parallel. The NVMe flash drives include an updated bus that enables faster data transport.
NVMe drives increase storage performance by enabling the compute layer to achieve greater parallelism than SSDs. The improved parallelism and reduced I/O overhead are due to the NVMe protocol, which was designed for low-latency commands and multiple queues, and to the PCIe bus, which offers up to 16 communication lanes with nearly 1 GB/sec of throughput. Because of low latency, multiple queues, and reduced I/O overhead, we strongly recommend NVMe drives for relational databases. NVMe drives in this platform provide:
The following table shows our PowerMax 8000 test configuration of 40 NVMe drives with 2 hot spares:
Table 3. NVMe drives in test configuration
Serial number |
Disk category name |
Number of NVMe disk drives |
Individual disk size (TB) |
Total disk size (TB) |
1 |
GRP_1_1920_EFD_7R5 |
8 |
1.5 |
12 |
2 |
GRP_2_3840_EFD_7R5 |
34 |
3 |
102 |
|
Total |
42 |
|
114 |