The MX7000 modular chassis hosts disaggregated blocks of server and storage, making it ideal for consolidating databases. In the test configuration, we used two PowerEdge MX840c servers in the MX7000 modular chassis. We dedicated one MX840c server to the SQL Server 2017 Enterprise Evaluation Edition RTM-CU13 database and the other to the Oracle 18c Enterprise Edition database. Dedicating an MX840c server to each database optimizes licensing by limiting costs and enables us to test database consolidation. In our tests, we identically configured each MX840c with 4 CPUs and 1.5 TB of memory. Each CPU had 20 cores, so 80 cores were available to each database.
We deployed both SQL Server and Oracle database VMs with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 as the guest operating system. Microsoft enables SQL Server customers to move their database licenses from Windows to Linux for free. We standardized the operating system, using Linux on both databases, to simplify management. In terms of the mixed database tests, using the same operating system streamlined execution and enabled faster analysis of the performance findings.
We configured the PowerMax 2000 storage array with 24 NVMe flash drives, which represents an entry-level storage configuration. Using an entry-level configuration for our tests demonstrates that customers can start with a minimal investment and scale-up to match growing demands. The following table shows the size of the storage configuration that we used and the maximum sizes for the PowerMax 2000 array as detailed in the PowerMax Family Specification Sheet:
Table 1. PowerMax 2000 maximum supported configuration versus tested configuration
PowerMax 2000 components | Maximum supported configuration | Tested configuration |
Number of bricks or engines | 2 | 1 |
Cache-system (raw) | 4 TB (with 2 TB engine) | 1 TB |
Number of front-end I/O modules per array | 16 | 4 |
16 Gb/s FC host ports per array | 64 | 16 |
Number of NVMe flash drives | 96 | 24 |
While testing the storage performance of the PowerMax 2000 array, we had the following goals: