We selected PowerEdge R640 two-socket servers as the compute nodes to represent an entry-level architecture for data virtualization. We recommend that enterprises with large data virtualization efforts consider PowerEdge four-socket servers. Four-socket platforms have the flexibility to deploy initially with only two sockets populated, and can upgrade to a four-processor configuration later. 

Compute nodes with two-sockets are a building block that can provide cloud-native elasticity to avoid both overprovisioning and underprovisioning of resources. Selecting the two-socket compute nodes can also provide benefits of lower database licensing costs when the number of CPU cores influences costs. For customers interested in how the number of cores impacts Oracle databases licensing, the Dell EMC and Oracle Database Licensing White Paper provides a strong foundation guide. 

The capability of the PowerEdge R640 server to support up to 6 TB of RAM was also important in our selection decision. Databases like Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server benefit from large memory pools. The PowerEdge R640 server also supports Non-volatile DIMMs (NVDIMM) and Intel Optane DC persistent memory. The PowerEdge R640 Rack Server webpage has more detail with links to the specification sheet and technical guide. 

We deployed two identical compute nodes in our lab for development of this solution. The first PowerEdge R640 server was dedicated to Oracle Big Data SQL 4.1. The second compute node was dedicated to Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Enterprise Evaluation Edition.

Table 1.              Oracle Big Data SQL and SQL Server PowerEdge R640 hardware component details 

Recommendation: In the BIOS configuration of these servers, customers can set the System Profile from the default value to ’Performance.’ The ‘Performance’ setting configures CPU Power Management to Maximum Performance, Memory Frequency to Maximum performance, Turbo Boost to Enabled, and configures many other settings that maximize performance for databases.

By default, Logical Processor is enabled on the PowerEdge R640 server. With Logical Processor enabled, the CPU presents two logical CPU cores for each physical core to the operating system. This can substantially improve performance for highly parallelized workloads like databases. We recommend that you verify that Logical Cores has been enabled.