Gen 7 Emulex® HBAs by Broadcom® Application Advantage for Dell R7625 AMD EPYC Servers
Read the ReportTue, 02 Apr 2024 23:05:59 -0000
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Dell PowerEdge R7625 servers with AMD EPYC processors & Emulex 64G Fibre Channel LPe36002 Host Bus Adapters demonstrate Application Advantages
Executive Summary
New generation technology can be expected to improve performance. There are times, however, when multiple technology advances can combine to provide an outsized advantage. Such is the case when the Dell PowerEdge R7625 Rack Server is combined with the Broadcom Emulex LPe36002 64G Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter.
Dell commissioned Tolly to benchmark the database performance of the Broadcom Emulex LPe36002 64G Fibre Channel dual-port host bus adapter (HBA) running in the Dell PowerEdge R7625 Rack Server and compare that to the same combined workload performance running in four separate, R740- class servers each outfitted with a 16G FC HBA as was standard with that server generation.
Following is a summary of the 4 tests conducted:
- The first test measured HammerDB “TPROC-C” Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) workload performance with Microsoft SQL Server Database to compare the NVMe/FC vs SCSI/FC performance on a Dell PowerEdge R7625 server with Broadcom Emulex LPe36002 64G Fibre Channel HBA.
Key Findings:
- Improved database transactions by up to 38%
- Reduced database stored procedure latency by up to 35%
- Improved server CPU efficiency by up to 50%
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2. The second test measured the HammerDB “TPROC-H” Decision Support System (DSS) analytics workload queries on a single Dell R7625 AMD EPYC-based platform and found that it pushed Emulex 64G Fibre Channel HBA to full line rate performance of 64G Fibre Channel, thus matching the combined application throughput of four previous generation R740-class Purley platform servers using 16G Fibre Channel HBAs.
Key Findings:
- Impressive database analytics throughput consolidation- from four R740 servers with 16G Fibre Channel HBAs to a single R7625 with 64G Fibre Channel HBA
- Consolidating analytics workload can significantly reduce I/O bound query times
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3. The third test revealed a 4:1 server consolidation benefit for Virtualization workloads where a single Dell R7625 AMD EPYC-based platform with 64G Fibre channel HBA matched the combined application throughput of four Dell R740-class Purley platform servers using 16G Fibre Channel HBAs.
Key Findings:
- Consolidation of virtual machine (VM) “Boot Storm” - Virtualization workloads throughput from four Dell R740 servers with 16GFC HBA to a singleDell R7625 with Emulex 64G Fibre Channel
- A VDI boot storm is the consumption of compute and disk I/O resources during the initial startup of end-user desktop virtual images that results in poor performance for all users. VDI environments need read I/O at boot (Bootstorm).
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4. The final test determined that the Dell R7625 with PCIe Gen5 and Emulex 64G Fibre Channel HBA combined to overcome bottlenecks for Oracle database HammerDB “TPROC-H” DSS analytics workload queries, achieving maximum throughput
Key Findings:
- R7625 with 64GFC HBA can achieve 4x the database analytics throughput of the16GFC HBA and 2x the throughput of the 32GFC HBA
- 42% improvement in complex database ad hoc query processing time when running the dual-port 64GFC HBA on the PCIe 5.0-based R7625 server compared to the older generation R740 server