The Dell PowerEdge R7525: a Leader in Price and performance for SQL Server 2019
Mon, 07 Feb 2022 21:44:20 -0000
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The Microsoft Server team at Dell Technologies is excited to announce the recently published decision support workload benchmark (TPC-H) that has the Dell PowerEdge R7525 as the price performance leader according to the 10,000 GB results published on December 15th, 2021. The Transaction Processing Council (TPC) provides the most trusted sources of independently audited database performance benchmarks. These TPC benchmarks provide a way for customers to compare the performance of servers using different sized workloads.
The Dell PowerEdge R7525 is a two-socket server that uses AMD EPYC processors and supports up to 4TB of memory, making it a strong choice for database workloads. The AMD EPYC 73F3 processor has 16 CPU cores and a base clock speed of 3.5 GHz that can boost up to 4.0 GHz. The base clock speed of 3.5 GHz for the CPU cores enables quick data processes, which enhances database value for customers.
We configured the Dell PowerEdge R7525 with two AMD EPYC 73F3 processors for a total of 32 physical cores and with hyperthreading 64 threads. The server was configured with the maximum amount of memory (4 TB) with DDR4-3200 DRAM in a 32 by 128 GiB memory configuration. The server storage configuration included ten 1.92 TB SSD drives and eight 6.4 enterprise NVMe drives. For the complete PowerEdge R7525 configuration, see the TPC Benchmark H Full Disclosure Report.
We used Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Enterprise Edition and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 for the TPC-H workload. The decision support workload (TPC-H) is designed to examine volumes of data, execute queries with a high degree of complexity, and provide answers to critical business questions. The key performance metric is the Composite Query-per-Hour (QphH@Size) for decision support benchmarks. The PowerEdge R7525 achieved a 960,382 QphH@Size rating with a 10,000 GB database size. To determine the price performance metric the total system cost of $379,133 USD was divided by the queries per hour. The price performance metric of $394.78 $/kQphH@10000GB placed the PowerEdge R7525 a leader in this category.*
The Microsoft team at Dell Technologies has recently published best practices for SQL Server, many of which were used in this independently audited TPC-H benchmark. To review these best practices that provide insights into how organizations can optimize their SQL Server environments, see this link: AMD-based SQL Server Best Practices.
The SQL Server Best Practices program includes the following:
- VMware ESXi: Round Robin Path Policy
- PowerMax: Adding Storage Groups
- PowerMax: Storage Directors Ports and Interface Emulations
- SQL Server 2019: CPU Affinity
The solutions page for Microsoft SQL Server provides an overview of how Dell Technologies and Microsoft SQL Server can enable your company with modern infrastructure and agile operations. To learn more, see Dell Technologies Solutions for Microsoft Data Platform.
For those interested in harnessing the performance of the AMD-based PowerEdge R7525 server see, PowerEdge R7525 rack server web page. This provides an overview and technical specifications of the PowerEdge R7525 server.
Dell Technologies offers a portfolio of other rack servers, tower and modular servers that can be configured to accelerate most any business workload. To learn more about these options, see Dell Technologies PowerEdge Server Solutions.
* Based on TPC Benchmark H (TPC-H), December 15th, 2021, the Dell EMC PowerEdge R7525 rack server has a TPC-H Composite Query-per-Hour Performance Metric of 960,382 and a price/kQphH metrick of 394.79 USD when run against a 10,000 GB Microsoft SQL Server 2019 database and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 in a non-clustered environment. Actual results may vary based on operating environment. Full results are available at tpc.org.