Test Report: PowerEdge R760 with SQL Server
Download PDFThu, 19 Jan 2023 00:23:23 -0000
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Summary
The introduction of new server technologies allows customers to deploy new solutions using the newly introduced functionality, but it can also provide an opportunity for them to review their current infrastructure and determine whether the new technology might increase efficiency. With this in mind, Dell Technologies recently sponsored performance testing of a Microsoft SQL Server 2019 solution on the new Dell PowerEdge R760, and compared the results to the same solution running on the previous generation R750 to determine if customers could benefit from a transition.
Deciding which CPU to deploy with an advanced solution like SQL Server can be challenging. Customers looking for maximum performance would typically start with the most expensive CPU available while other customers might make a choice that offers a tradeoff between performance and price. With the evolution of new processor features such as Intel® Speed Select, and QAT, this choice can seem even more complicated. To reduce these complications, we decided to benchmark the new R760 with a lower cost processor that enables both Speed Select and QAT so that we can compare the results to an R750 using the top end Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8380 CPU.
Methodology
Testing was conducted in the Dell Systems Performance Analysis lab. To conduct the testing, we deployed MSFT SQL Server 2019 Enterprise Edition with HammerDB 4.5 on both systems as the benchmarking tool for On Line Transactional Processing (OLTP) to measure the New Operations per Minute (NOPM) performance of both, and compared the results. Next, we performed a backup of two different database configurations and measured the time required. Finally, we enabled QAT in the R760 and performed the same set of backups to determine the difference in time required.
Hardware configurations tested
Note: The Dell Ent NVMe P5600 MU U.2 3.2TB Drives are manufactured by Solidigm.
Special features tested on the 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Processor
The Platinum 8460Y was chosen for this test. This processor includes support for Intel® Speed Select Technology and Quick Assist Technology. For additional details about this processor, see Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8460Y Processor 105M Cache 2.00 GHz Product Specifications.
Intel® Speed Select Technology - Performance Profile[1]
This technology demonstrates a capability to configure the processor to run at three distinct operating points.
For this test, the Platinum 8460Y was configured for operation at 2.3Ghz which set the active cores to 32.
Intel® QuickAssist Technology (QAT)[2]
Intel® QAT saves cycles, time, space, and cost by offloading compute-intensive workloads to free up capacity. For this test, the time to conduct a backup of the database was measured with QAT off and QAT on.
Recommended customer pricing for the CPUs used in the tested configurations
(Based on pricing listed on Intel's website on January 11, 2023. Pricing may change without notice.)
R750 - Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8380 - $9,359
R760 - Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8460Y - $5,558
Price Delta:
R750 | R760 | CPU Price Delta |
$9,359.00 | $5,558.00 | -40.6% |
Source:
8380: Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8380 Processor 60M Cache 2.30 GHz Product Specifications
8460Y: Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8460Y Processor 105M Cache 2.00 GHz Product Specifications
Software configurations tested
Test details
BIOS settings
SQL Server settings
- Max server memory (MB): 460000 MB
- Min server memory (MB): 10240 MB
- Lightweight pooling: 1 (Enabled)
- Recovery interval: 32767
- Max degree of parallelism: 1
- Lightweight pooling: 1
- Default trace enabled: 0
- Priority boost: 1 (Enabled)
- Recovery interval (min): 32767
- Lock pages in memory: Enabled
- Max worker threads: 3000
Test results
All of the following results represent the average of five separate test runs.
NOPM Performance
Note: Higher is better
QAT Performance
Note: Lower is better
Conclusion
Choosing the right combination of Server and Processor can both increase performance as well as reduce cost. As this testing demonstrated, by using advanced features like Speed Select, the Dell PowerEdge R760 with 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8460Y CPU’s was up to 16% faster than the Dell PowerEdge R750 with 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8380 CPU’s. Further, the R760 was able to accomplish this using CPU’s with a recommended Customer Price that was over 40% less.
The testing further demonstrated how Quick Assist Technology (QAT) could significant reduce backup times allowing key database services to bring services back online up to 42% faster after routine backups were performed.
Related Documents
Deliver Business Insights Faster with Microsoft SQL Server 2019 and VMware vSAN™
Tue, 17 Jan 2023 07:07:32 -0000
|Read Time: 0 minutes
Summary
This joint paper outlines a brief discussion on the key hardware considerations when planning and configuring a VMware vSAN™server configuration. Including sample PowerEdge server configurations for a starting deployment and quoting process.
Today’s enterprises need to move fast to stay competitive. For example, high- speed transactional processing solutions accelerate insights for financial trading or wholesale supply. High-speed analytics solutions enable users to quickly identify patterns in customer behavior or resource usage to inform better predictions and forecasts.
IT professionals are on point to deliver this high-performance data while reducing infrastructure costs. That is why IT pros choose Microsoft SQL Server 2019 running on VMware vSAN™.
They also choose Dell EMC™ PowerEdge™ rack servers configured with the latest generation of Intel® technologies. What are the benefits?
- Selecting SQL Server 2019 enables IT pros to deliver industry leading performancei.
- Adopting hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) powered by vSAN, combined with VMware vSphere®, enables IT pros to manage compute and storage with a single platform that lowers infrastructure costs when compared to traditional three-tier architecturesii.
- Dell EMC PowerEdge servers running vSphere boost the orders per minute (OPM) of transactional databases more than 1.9 timesiii, and they allow users to complete 8x the analytics in 39 percent less timeiv, when compared to previous-generation servers.
Key Considerations
To get started, available server configurations for SQL server 2019 are shown in the “Available Configurations” section below. Key considerations include the following:
- CPU: High-frequency 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors with 2.8 GHz clock speeds help optimize performance by enabling SQL Server 2019 locks to be released more quickly so multiple processes can access data faster. Additionally, Dell Technologies recommends using multiples of 24 CPU cores to make it easier to segment vSAN clusters and match the licensing structure of SQL Server 2019 Standard edition.
- Memory and Storage: The Base configuration can be set up with two storage groups and up to eight capacity drives, while the Plus configuration can be equipped with up to four storage groups and up to 12 capacity drives. In general, using more storage groups provides better write performance.
Dell Technologies recommends 1 TB of Intel® Optane™ persistent memory (PMem) 200 series per node. Intel Optane PMem creates a larger memory pool that enables SQL Server 2019 to run faster because data can be read from logical, in-memory storage, as opposed to a physical disk. For storage, Dell recommends using Intel Optane Solid State Drives (SSDs) for caching frequently accessed data. The Intel Optane SSD P5800X is the world’s fastest data center SSDv. PCIe® Gen4 NAND SSDs are recommended for the capacity tier.
- Networking: The configuration specifies Intel® Ethernet 800 Series network interface controllers (NICs) with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), a hardware-acceleration feature that reduces the load on the CPU. Intel Ethernet 800 Series NICs start at 10 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and scale up to 100 GbE. With Intel Ethernet 800 Series NICs, you will notice faster data speed between vSAN clusters, which becomes more important as node counts grow.
Available Configurations
The Plus configuration includes more cores, memory, and storage to support more or larger SQL Server 2019 instances and provide better performance.
Configuratio nsvi | Base Configuration
Dell EMC™ PowerEdge™ R650 Rack Server, up to 10 NVMe® Drives, 1 RU | Plus Configuration
Dell EMC PowerEdge R750 Rack Server, up to 16 NVMe Drives, 2 RU |
Platform | Dell EMC™ PowerEdge™ R650 rack server supporting up to 10 NVMe drives (direct connection with no Dell™ PowerEdge RAID Controller [PERC]) | Dell EMC PowerEdge R750 rack server supporting up to16 NVMe drives (direct connection with no Dell PERC) |
CPUvii | 2 x Intel® Xeon® Gold 6342 processor (24 cores at 2.8 GHz) | 2 x Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8362 processor (32 cores at 2.8 GHz) or Intel Xeon Platinum 8358 processor (32 cores at 2.6 GHz) |
DRAM | 256 GB (16 x 16 GB DDR4-3200) | |
Persistent memoryviii | 1 TB (8 x 128 GB Intel® Optane™ PMem 200 series) | |
Boot device | Dell EMC™ Boot Optimized Server Storage (BOSS)-S2 with 2 x 480 GB Intel® SSD S4510 M.2 Serial ATA (SATA) (RAID1) | Dell EMC™ Boot Optimized Server Storage (BOSS)-S2 with 2 x 480 GB Intel® SSD S4510 M.2 Serial ATA (SATA) (RAID1) |
Storage adapter | Not required for an all-NVMe configuration | |
Cache tier drivesix | 2 x 400 GB Intel Optane SSD P5800X (PCIe® Gen4) or 2 x 375 GB Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X (PCIe Gen3) | 3 x 400 GB Intel Optane SSD P5800X (PCIe Gen4) or 3 x 375 GB Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X (PCIe Gen3) |
Capacity tier drives | 4 x (up to 8 x) 3.84 TB Intel SSD P5500 (PCIe Gen4, read- intensive) | 6 x (up to 12 x) 3.84 TB Intel SSD P5500 (PCIe Gen4, read-intensive) |
NIC | Intel® Ethernet Network Adapter E810-XXV for OCP3 (dual-port 25 Gb) | Intel Ethernet Network Adapter E810-XXV for OCP3 (dual-port 25 Gb) or Intel Ethernet Network Adapter E810-CQDA2 PCIe add-in card (dual-port 100 Gb) |
Learn More
Contact your Dell or Intel account team for a customized quote 1-877-289+-3355
Visit the Dell vSAN Configuration Options Getting Started
Download “Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes.” to learn about hyperconverged building blocks for VMware vSAN™ environments.
Download “Microsoft SQL 2019 on Intel Optane Persistent Memory (PMem) Using Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers” to learn about advantages of using Intel Optane PMem with SQL Server 2019.
i TPC. TPC-E webpage. http://tpc.org/tpce/default5.asp.
ii Forrester Consulting. “The Total Economic Impact™ of VMware vSAN.” Commissioned by VMware. July 2019. www.vmware.com/learn/345149_REG.html.
iii Principled Technologies. “Dell EMC PowerEdge R650 servers running VMware vSphere 7.0 Update 2 can boost transactional database performance to help you become future ready.” Commissioned by Dell Technologies. June 2021. http://facts.pt/MbQ1xCy.
iv Principled Technologies. “Analyze more data, faster, by upgrading to latest-generation Dell EMC PowerEdge R750 servers.” Commissioned by Dell Technologies. June 2021. http://facts.pt/poJUNRK.
v Source: 14 at: Intel. “Intel® Optane™ SSD P5800X Series - Performance Index.” https://edc.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/performance/benchmarks/intel-optane-ssd-p5800x-series/.
vi The “Plus” configuration supports more or larger Microsoft SQL Server 2019 instances with higher core count CPUs and additional disk
groups that deliver higher performance.
vii Plus configuration: the Intel Xeon Platinum 8362 processor is recommended, but the Intel Xeon Platinum 8358 processor can be used instead if the Intel Xeon Platinum 8362 processor is not yet available.
viii Base and Plus configurations: Intel Optane PMem in Memory Mode provides more memory at lower cost.
ix Base and Plus configurations: The Intel Optane SSD P5800X is recommended, but the previous-generation Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X can be used instead if the Intel Optane SSD P5800X is not yet available.
Dell PowerEdge R940xa Server is the Leader in Price/Performance for SQL Server 2019
Tue, 17 Jan 2023 07:20:42 -0000
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Summary
The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) published that the Dell EMC PE R940xa is the leader in Price per Performance for SQL Server 2019 in the 4S and 10TB category.1 This DfD will educate readers of what this means, and why this is so important for today’s compute intensive workloads.
Leader in Price/Performance
The Dell EMC PowerEdge R940xa 4 socket (4S) server ranked #1 in price/performance in the 10TB SQL Server category, as published by the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). The analysis showed that the PowerEdge R940xa delivered $0.67 USD per query- per-hour for a 10TB SQL Server 2019 database in a non-clustered environment. This metric was computed by dividing the R940xa server price by the TPC-H Composite Query-per-Hour (QphH) performance. 1
The PowerEdge R940xa delivers these results with powerful performance from the combination of four CPUs and four GPUs to drive database acceleration at a competitive price point. This performance is ideal for compute-intensive workloads like SQL Server and allows users to scale business-critical workloads with:
- Up to four 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors and up to 112 processing cores
- Up to four double-width GPUs or up to four double-width or eight single-width FPGAs to accelerate workloads
- Up to 48 DIMMs (24 of which can be DCPMMs) and up to 15.36TB of memory for large data sets
- 32 2.5” HDDs/SSDs, including four NVME drives
- Up to 12 PCIe slots for external connections
Impact to Server Users
This superior price per performance means that PowerEdge R940xa server users have optimized returns per dollar for compute-intensive workloads. Datacenter owners can also reinvest their financial savings into alternative segments to achieve their desired goals.
*To see the official TPC website results please click here.