Scalable and reliable compute performance, in conjunction with your 16Gb Fibre Channel capability with SAN-based storage, means you don’t have to worry about your application VMs losing performance as your business grows. In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment delivered up to 91.7 percent greater throughput while running a virtualized OLTP database workload than the similarly priced Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment. More importantly, the Dell M1000e blade environment delivered consistent scaling as we added blade servers, in contrast to the performance degradation we observed in the Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment. The Dell M1000e also left room to grow within the 10U, with eight additional half-height slots available for compute nodes in the future, whereas the Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment would require a second enclosure to house additional blades. Finally, both solutions were similarly priced, so there is no additional cost associated with the advantages of the Dell environment. For applications demanding dense compute environments, high throughput, and lower response rates, companies will find the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment better able to scale to meet predictable performance requirements as their business grows.
Find out how the unique architecture of MDS 9396S innovative, next-generation switch enables you to design a high-performing, scalable Fibre Channel SAN. Learn best practices for supporting flash storage applications as well as a wide variety of deployment scenarios. See how the new Cisco MDS 9396S can meet your SAN challenges today and tomorrow as we reveal:
• Architectural innovations inside the Cisco MDS 9396S
• Enterprise-class features and scale options
• Design and deployment scenarios
• Customer-tested best practices for implementation
Dell Solutions Tour 2015 - Programvare erstatter maskinvare, revolusjonen har...Kenneth de Brucq
Programvare kan nå erstatte tradisjonell infrastruktur på datasenteret. Med programvare-definert datalagring og nettverk fra VMware oppnår du stor fleksibilitet, valgfrihet og betydelige besparelser. Vi ser nærmere på nye versjoner av VMware Virtual SAN og NSX, samt EVO:RACK hyperconverged som alle lanseres på VMworld høsten 2015
IBM System Storage® DS3500 Express® combines best-of-breed development with leading 6 Gbps host interface and drive technology. With its simple, efficient and flexible approach to storage, the DS3500 Express is a cost-effective, fully integrated complement to IBM System x® servers, IBM BladeCenter® and IBM Power Systems™...
StorPool presents at Cloud Field Day - the leading technology event focused on the impact of cloud technologies on enterprise IT. During the event, the high-performance block storage specialist will showcase how its storage technology allows cloud builders to easily outperform cloud titans like AWS, Microsoft Azure and GCP.
Performance is of major importance for modern applications and workloads. No matter if you run a private cloud or deliver public cloud services for customers, you need to ensure the excellent performance for the workloads running on the cloud. Often misunderstood, storage has a direct impact not only on the reliability of cloud services, but also on the performance of the entire cloud.
https://storpool.com/news/storpool-presents-at-cloud-field-day-9
In this deck, Gilad Shainer from Mellanox provides an overview of new products for the SC15 conference.
Learn more: http://mellanox.com
Watch the video presentation: http://wp.me/p3RLHQ-eJu
Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter
In this video from SC15, Larry Jones from Seagate provides an overview of the company's revamped HPC storage product line. At SC15, Seagate announced a major expansion of its HPC product portfolio including the ClusterStor HPC hard disk drive designed for Big Data applications.
Learn more: http://www.seagate.com/products/enterprise-servers-storage/enterprise-storage-systems/clustered-file-systems/
Watch the video presentation: http://wp.me/p3RLHQ-eMC
Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter
Find out how the unique architecture of MDS 9396S innovative, next-generation switch enables you to design a high-performing, scalable Fibre Channel SAN. Learn best practices for supporting flash storage applications as well as a wide variety of deployment scenarios. See how the new Cisco MDS 9396S can meet your SAN challenges today and tomorrow as we reveal:
• Architectural innovations inside the Cisco MDS 9396S
• Enterprise-class features and scale options
• Design and deployment scenarios
• Customer-tested best practices for implementation
Dell Solutions Tour 2015 - Programvare erstatter maskinvare, revolusjonen har...Kenneth de Brucq
Programvare kan nå erstatte tradisjonell infrastruktur på datasenteret. Med programvare-definert datalagring og nettverk fra VMware oppnår du stor fleksibilitet, valgfrihet og betydelige besparelser. Vi ser nærmere på nye versjoner av VMware Virtual SAN og NSX, samt EVO:RACK hyperconverged som alle lanseres på VMworld høsten 2015
IBM System Storage® DS3500 Express® combines best-of-breed development with leading 6 Gbps host interface and drive technology. With its simple, efficient and flexible approach to storage, the DS3500 Express is a cost-effective, fully integrated complement to IBM System x® servers, IBM BladeCenter® and IBM Power Systems™...
StorPool presents at Cloud Field Day - the leading technology event focused on the impact of cloud technologies on enterprise IT. During the event, the high-performance block storage specialist will showcase how its storage technology allows cloud builders to easily outperform cloud titans like AWS, Microsoft Azure and GCP.
Performance is of major importance for modern applications and workloads. No matter if you run a private cloud or deliver public cloud services for customers, you need to ensure the excellent performance for the workloads running on the cloud. Often misunderstood, storage has a direct impact not only on the reliability of cloud services, but also on the performance of the entire cloud.
https://storpool.com/news/storpool-presents-at-cloud-field-day-9
In this deck, Gilad Shainer from Mellanox provides an overview of new products for the SC15 conference.
Learn more: http://mellanox.com
Watch the video presentation: http://wp.me/p3RLHQ-eJu
Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter
In this video from SC15, Larry Jones from Seagate provides an overview of the company's revamped HPC storage product line. At SC15, Seagate announced a major expansion of its HPC product portfolio including the ClusterStor HPC hard disk drive designed for Big Data applications.
Learn more: http://www.seagate.com/products/enterprise-servers-storage/enterprise-storage-systems/clustered-file-systems/
Watch the video presentation: http://wp.me/p3RLHQ-eMC
Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter
Introducing QuickStack, a converged cloud solution powered by The Canonical Distribution of Ubuntu OpenStack. QuickStack delivers the fastest and reliable way to build an OpenStack cloud with the verified and thoroughly tested architecture, which dramatically reduces the time and risk associated with your OpenStack cloud projects. With QuickStack, building an OpenStack cloud is no longer complicated, but instead fast and easy
Deep Dive On Intel Optane SSDs And New Server PlatformsNEXTtour
CLOSE
As enterprises embrace software defined and hyperconverged infrastructure, original methods for defining infrastructure ingredients becomes more complex. Maintaining a balanced platform with a diverse set of workloads is required to maximize TCO. Defining configurations at the solution level helps ease the challenges of implementing HCI, while optimizing TCO. Come to this session to learn about Intel’s view on how HCI configurations will be using technologies like Optane SSDs, the newest server platforms, and new SSD form factors to continue HCI TCO scaling.
Yesterday's thinking may still believe NVMe (NVM Express) is in transition to a production ready solution. In this session, we will discuss how the evolution of NVMe is ready for production, the history and evolution of NVMe and the Linux stack to address where NVMe has progressed today to become the low latency, highly reliable database key value store mechanism that will drive the future of cloud expansion. Examples of protocol efficiencies and types of storage engines that are optimizing for NVMe will be discussed. Please join us for an exciting session where in-memory computing and persistence have evolved.
Containers and Nutanix - Acropolis Container ServicesNEXTtour
This presentation was given at the London Nutanix user group (NUG) on Oct 26 by Denis Guyadeen. If you would like to join a NUG, you can find more information here http://bit.ly/NTNXUG - Hope to see you at a community meeting!
SQL Server 2016 database performance on the Dell EMC PowerEdge FC630 QLogic 1...Principled Technologies
Upgrading the hardware running your SQL Server to a space-efficient modular Dell EMC modern environment can help your company achieve a great deal of database work in a small amount of space. With the Dell Express Flash technology, adding a caching solution such as Samsung AutoCache can make the environment even more efficient.
In the PT labs, we ran a mixed database workload on six Dell EMC PowerEdge FC630 servers, powered by Intel Xeon E5-2667 processors, in three PowerEdge FX2 enclosures. The solution included the QLogic QLE2692 16Gb FC adapter with StorFusion Technology, Dell EMC Storage SC9000 all-flash storage, and Dell EMC PowerEdge Express Flash NVMe Performance PCIe SSDs.
With no caching solution, the 36 SQL Server 2016 VMs on the six servers achieved a total of 431,839 orders per minute while an Oracle workload ran on 12 VMs. When we added a caching solution to accelerate the SQL database volumes, the performance across the 36 SQL Server 2016 VMs doubled to 871,580. These numbers show the power of server-side caching to alleviate pressure on the storage array allowing you to get even more out of the Dell EMC modern environment.
Update your private cloud with 14th generation Dell EMC PowerEdge FC640 serve...Principled Technologies
Critical Apache Cassandra NoSQL databases can offer reliability and flexibility for workloads like media streaming or social media. Running these databases in a private cloud can let you maintain control of your data while giving you the agility and flexibility the cloud provides.
In our datacenter, the Dell EMC PowerEdge FC640 solution powered by Intel Xeon Gold 5120 processors dramatically increased performance for Apache Cassandra workloads compared to a legacy solution. By choosing a solution that can do up to 4.7 times the work of the legacy solution, your infrastructure could handle more requests at a time—and we found that the Dell EMC PowerEdge FC640 solution could do all this additional work in less space, which could let you hold off on renting more datacenter space or on building out your existing space as your business grows.
Converged architecture advantages: Dell PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 servers vs. ...Principled Technologies
Based on our testing with heavy SQL Server 2014 database workloads, the converged architecture solution of a Dell PowerEdge FX2s chassis and FC830 servers delivered 3.9 times the performance of our legacy IBM solution. We also found the Dell PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 solution offered 73 percent lower cost per order compared to the legacy IBM System x3850 X5 solution. In addition, the PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 solution does not sacrifice traditional hardware redundancy while providing the same highly available database solution in a smaller rack space. If your business runs Microsoft SQL Server 2014, the converged architecture approach with Dell PowerEdge FX2s chassis and FC830 servers powered by Intel could bring a harmonious balance of performance, reliability, and cost efficiency to your data center.
Introducing QuickStack, a converged cloud solution powered by The Canonical Distribution of Ubuntu OpenStack. QuickStack delivers the fastest and reliable way to build an OpenStack cloud with the verified and thoroughly tested architecture, which dramatically reduces the time and risk associated with your OpenStack cloud projects. With QuickStack, building an OpenStack cloud is no longer complicated, but instead fast and easy
Deep Dive On Intel Optane SSDs And New Server PlatformsNEXTtour
CLOSE
As enterprises embrace software defined and hyperconverged infrastructure, original methods for defining infrastructure ingredients becomes more complex. Maintaining a balanced platform with a diverse set of workloads is required to maximize TCO. Defining configurations at the solution level helps ease the challenges of implementing HCI, while optimizing TCO. Come to this session to learn about Intel’s view on how HCI configurations will be using technologies like Optane SSDs, the newest server platforms, and new SSD form factors to continue HCI TCO scaling.
Yesterday's thinking may still believe NVMe (NVM Express) is in transition to a production ready solution. In this session, we will discuss how the evolution of NVMe is ready for production, the history and evolution of NVMe and the Linux stack to address where NVMe has progressed today to become the low latency, highly reliable database key value store mechanism that will drive the future of cloud expansion. Examples of protocol efficiencies and types of storage engines that are optimizing for NVMe will be discussed. Please join us for an exciting session where in-memory computing and persistence have evolved.
Containers and Nutanix - Acropolis Container ServicesNEXTtour
This presentation was given at the London Nutanix user group (NUG) on Oct 26 by Denis Guyadeen. If you would like to join a NUG, you can find more information here http://bit.ly/NTNXUG - Hope to see you at a community meeting!
SQL Server 2016 database performance on the Dell EMC PowerEdge FC630 QLogic 1...Principled Technologies
Upgrading the hardware running your SQL Server to a space-efficient modular Dell EMC modern environment can help your company achieve a great deal of database work in a small amount of space. With the Dell Express Flash technology, adding a caching solution such as Samsung AutoCache can make the environment even more efficient.
In the PT labs, we ran a mixed database workload on six Dell EMC PowerEdge FC630 servers, powered by Intel Xeon E5-2667 processors, in three PowerEdge FX2 enclosures. The solution included the QLogic QLE2692 16Gb FC adapter with StorFusion Technology, Dell EMC Storage SC9000 all-flash storage, and Dell EMC PowerEdge Express Flash NVMe Performance PCIe SSDs.
With no caching solution, the 36 SQL Server 2016 VMs on the six servers achieved a total of 431,839 orders per minute while an Oracle workload ran on 12 VMs. When we added a caching solution to accelerate the SQL database volumes, the performance across the 36 SQL Server 2016 VMs doubled to 871,580. These numbers show the power of server-side caching to alleviate pressure on the storage array allowing you to get even more out of the Dell EMC modern environment.
Update your private cloud with 14th generation Dell EMC PowerEdge FC640 serve...Principled Technologies
Critical Apache Cassandra NoSQL databases can offer reliability and flexibility for workloads like media streaming or social media. Running these databases in a private cloud can let you maintain control of your data while giving you the agility and flexibility the cloud provides.
In our datacenter, the Dell EMC PowerEdge FC640 solution powered by Intel Xeon Gold 5120 processors dramatically increased performance for Apache Cassandra workloads compared to a legacy solution. By choosing a solution that can do up to 4.7 times the work of the legacy solution, your infrastructure could handle more requests at a time—and we found that the Dell EMC PowerEdge FC640 solution could do all this additional work in less space, which could let you hold off on renting more datacenter space or on building out your existing space as your business grows.
Converged architecture advantages: Dell PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 servers vs. ...Principled Technologies
Based on our testing with heavy SQL Server 2014 database workloads, the converged architecture solution of a Dell PowerEdge FX2s chassis and FC830 servers delivered 3.9 times the performance of our legacy IBM solution. We also found the Dell PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 solution offered 73 percent lower cost per order compared to the legacy IBM System x3850 X5 solution. In addition, the PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 solution does not sacrifice traditional hardware redundancy while providing the same highly available database solution in a smaller rack space. If your business runs Microsoft SQL Server 2014, the converged architecture approach with Dell PowerEdge FX2s chassis and FC830 servers powered by Intel could bring a harmonious balance of performance, reliability, and cost efficiency to your data center.
OLTP with Dell hybrid arrays: Comparing the EqualLogic PS6210XS with the Equa...Principled Technologies
The effectiveness of your OLTP database environment can depend to an enormous degree on the storage system you select. We compared a database server solution using the Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS with a database server solution using the previous-generation Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS.
The EqualLogic PS6210XS solution was superior in all areas we tested. It delivered greater performance with faster response time, and used less power. The Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS is a clear improvement over the previous-generation Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS.
Boosting virtualization performance with Intel SSD DC Series P3600 NVMe SSDs ...Principled Technologies
When it comes time to make your server purchase or if you’re looking for an easy way to boost performance of existing infrastructure, consider upgrading your server’s internal storage. As our hands-on tests with a Dell EMC PowerEdge R630 environment running VMware Virtual SAN proved, Intel SSD DC P3600 Series NVMe SSDs could increase virtualized mixed-workload performance by as much as 59.9 percent compared to SATA SSDs while allowing you to run a large additional number of VMs. When you improve performance for your virtualized workloads, your employees and customers will benefit. By increasing performance with Intel NVMe SSDs on your Dell EMC PowerEdge R630 servers, you can potentially slash wait times and do more work on your servers without having to expand your infrastructure with additional storage arrays, which can translate to happier users and a more efficient infrastructure.
SQL Server 2016 database performance on the Dell PowerEdge R930 QLogic 16G Fi...Principled Technologies
As support ends for aging software and applications, such as SQL Server 2005, migrating to a new, updated version is inevitable and necessary. This migration presents a unique opportunity to upgrade the hardware running these applications, too—a real change to your datacenter.
In our test, the modern four-socket Dell PowerEdge R930 powered by Intel Xeon E7-8860 v4 processors working with the powerful Dell Storage SC9000 array and running SQL Server 2016 got over six times the database performance of a legacy solution running SQL Server 2005. The modern PowerEdge solution also delivered a faster response time.
As you move to a more modern, fully featured database software, why not also move to a powerful, modern server hardware solution as well? Consolidating your SQL Server workloads from legacy servers onto Dell PowerEdge R930 servers powered by Intel Xeon E7 v4 processors can let you do more with less, streamline your datacenter, and reduce costs.
SQL Server 2016 database performance on the Dell PowerEdge R830 QLogic 16G Fi...Principled Technologies
Nothing lasts forever. When software manufacturers discontinue support for aging programs, as Microsoft has done for SQL Server 2005, businesses using these applications must take the step of migrating to new, updated versions. Coupling this upgrade with an upgrade to the hardware on which the applications run can take performance improvements to an even higher level.
In our testing, the modern four-socket Dell PowerEdge R830 powered by Intel Xeon processors E5-4650 v4 working with the powerful Dell Storage SC9000 array and running SQL Server 2016 delivered over five times the database performance of a legacy PowerEdge R820 solution running SQL Server 2005. The modern PowerEdge solution also delivered a faster response time.
Running modern, fully featured database software on four-year-old servers is possible, but far from optimal. Consolidating your SQL Server workloads from legacy servers onto Dell PowerEdge R830 servers powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-4600 v4 product family is a way to streamline and modernize your datacenter.
Comparing Dell Compellent network-attached storage to an industry-leading NAS...Principled Technologies
A flexible NAS solution addresses many organizational challenges from server backup to hosting production applications and databases. Advanced NAS solutions such as the Intel Xeon processor-based Dell Compellent FS8600 NAS provide flexibility and scalability, allowing various use options as well as drive options throughout its lifecycle. This scale and flexibility enables an organization to alleviate performance bottlenecks anywhere in the organization simply by reallocating or adding more disk resources.
We found that the Intel Xeon processor-based Dell Compellent FS8600 NAS solution backed up a small-file corpus up to 15.9 percent faster and a large-file corpus up to 17.1 percent faster than a similarly configured, industry-leading NAS solution. This means that selecting the Dell Compellent FS8600 NAS has the potential to help optimize an organization’s infrastructure.
VDI performance comparison: Dell PowerEdge FX2 and FC430 servers with VMware ...Principled Technologies
Replacing your legacy VDI servers with a new Intel Xeon processor E5-2670 v3-powered Dell PowerEdge FX2 solution using VMware Virtual SAN can be a great boon for your enterprise.
In the Principled Technologies (PT) labs, this space-efficient, affordable solution outperformed a five-year-old legacy server and traditional SAN by offering twice as many VDI users. Additionally, it achieved greater performance while using 91 percent less space and at a cost of only $167.89 per user in hardware costs.
By supporting more users, saving space, and its affordability, an upgrade to the Intel-powered Dell PowerEdge FX2 solution using VMware Virtual SAN can be a wise move when replacing your aging, older infrastructure.
As our tests show, investing in the powerful new Dell PowerEdge R920 running Oracle VM Server 3.2.8 with Oracle Database 12c VMs achieves cost savings without compromising performance. In our testing, a single Dell PowerEdge R920 could perform five times the work of a single HP ProLiant DL385 G6 server; the costs to power and cool the Dell PowerEdge would be 43 percent less than the five servers it could replace. The three-year software licensing costs of the Dell PowerEdge R920 server would be 22 percent lower than the licensing costs for the five-server solution. These dramatic savings—which come out to $212,091 for our single test environment — could grow to millions of dollars in a larger consolidation effort.
OLTP with Dell EqualLogic hybrid arrays: A comparative study with an industry...Principled Technologies
The effectiveness of your OLTP database environment can depend to an enormous degree on the storage system you select. We compared a database server solution using the Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS with a one using competing industry-leading SAN storage.
The EqualLogic PS6210XS solution was overwhelmingly superior in all areas we tested. It delivered twice the performance with half the response time, and used a fraction of the power.
These factors make it clear that any business that relies on its database servers and wants to get the greatest return on its storage investment must consider the Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS.
Get insight from document-based distributed MongoDB databases sooner and have...Principled Technologies
With additional drive bays and 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 servers handled more Yahoo Cloud Serving Benchmark (YCSB) operations per second than previous-generation servers and handled them more efficiently
Dell PowerEdge M420 and Oracle Database 11g R2: A Reference ArchitecturePrincipled Technologies
The compute density of your data center is critical to your bottom line – packing more compute power into a smaller space has the potential to greatly reduce data center costs. The ultra-dense, quarter-height Dell PowerEdge M420 blade server combines with Dell PowerConnect and Force10 switches, Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade enclosure, and Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS arrays to maximize the compute density of your data center.
Speeding time to insight: The Dell PowerEdge C6620 with Dell PERC 12 RAID con...Principled Technologies
The new PowerEdge C6620 delivered better performance—both higher throughput and lower latency—than a previous-generation PowerEdge C6520 with PERC 11
Conclusion
The vast amounts of unstructured data that people and organizations generate daily have the potential to bring incredible value to companies that can utilize it quickly and correctly. Buried in the data are insights about consumer preferences, product performance, environmental trends, and more—but to access those insights at the speed of business, you need high-performing NoSQL databases. Aging servers may be holding you back from the full value of your data.
We found that the new Dell PowerEdge C6620 with Broadcom-based PERC 12 RAID controller can speed read-intensive Apache Cassandra database workloads compared to an older server solution. Faster read and update latencies and higher throughput, as we saw the PowerEdge C6620 deliver, can speed the retrieval, processing, and analysis of your unstructured data, enabling you to more effectively extract its value. To more fully utilize your data to inform your everyday business operations, consider the Dell PowerEdge C6620 with Broadcom-based PERC 12 RAID controller.
Move your private cloud to Dell EMC PowerEdge C6420 server nodes and boost Ap...Principled Technologies
Powered by 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Dell EMC PowerEdge C6420 server nodes handled 2X the operations per second of older HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9 nodes
Move your private cloud to Dell EMC PowerEdge C6420 server nodes and boost Ap...Principled Technologies
Powered by 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Dell EMC PowerEdge C6420 server nodes handled 2X the operations per second of older HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9 nodes
As our tests show, investing in the powerful new Dell PowerEdge R920 running Oracle Database 12c pluggable databases achieves cost savings without compromising performance. In our testing, a single Dell PowerEdge R920 was able to do nine times the work of a single HP ProLiant DL385 G6 server while the power and cooling costs dropped by 64 percent when compared to the nine servers it could replace. At 17 percent less, three-year software licensing savings were so dramatic that they paid back the new server costs in just six months, and over three years could save just under $300,000.
Comparing performance and cost: Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs. legacy hardware solutionPrincipled Technologies
Keeping a legacy, disparate hardware solution instead of choosing the new Dell PowerEdge VRTX may cost you more than you realize. We found that the Dell PowerEdge VRTX increased application performance over a legacy, disparate hardware solution across email, database, and file/print server simultaneous workloads while reducing power consumption by 19.8 percent. The VRTX did so in 70.6 percent less rack-equivalent space than the legacy, disparate hardware solution and with one-third as many cables, to reduce complexity and reduce the burden of space in small offices. Finally, despite a larger initial investment, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX could actually lower your total cost of ownership over years as much as 26.0 percent, delivering a solid return on your investment in less than three years.
As our test results show, investing in the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution could provide you with a compact solution to optimize application performance, reduce complexity, and even lower the total cost of your solution over its lifetime.
Scaling Oracle 12c database performance with EMC XtremIO storage in a Databas...Principled Technologies
Oracle single instance database VMs need plenty of storage capacity and performance to handle increased workload demands placed on them by users. Whether your organization uses DBaaS or traditional Oracle 12c instances, consider the reliable performance and scaling flexibility that the EMC XtremIO storage array can offer. We found IOPS levels stayed consistent as we scaled up to eight Oracle single instance VMs and scaled by an average of 14,700 IOPS for each VM (totaling 118,067). In addition, we found that the inline deduplication, compression, and thin provisioning capabilities on the XtremIO array resulted in an overall efficiency ratio of 51 to 1 and a data reduction ratio of 14.6 to 1. With this level of consistent performance, users can expect great performance to meet high demand for IOPS in a DBaaS environment.
Meet database performance needs while reducing TCO with the Dell PowerEdge VR...Principled Technologies
Cloud WAN services can seem convenient for small businesses and remote offices, but they remove local control and can be more expensive over time. In our tests, the all-in-one Dell PowerEdge VRTX provided the necessary transactional database performance while saving up to 63.9 percent in costs over five years. When you’re looking for a reliable solution to run workloads in remote offices, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX has the potential to cost less than running databases from the cloud.
Similar to Database performance in blade environments: Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108 (20)
Investing in GenAI: Cost‑benefit analysis of Dell on‑premises deployments vs....Principled Technologies
Conclusion
Diving into the world of GenAI has the potential to yield a great many benefits for your organization, but it first requires consideration for how best to implement those GenAI workloads. Whether your AI goals are to create a chatbot for online visitors, generate marketing materials, aid troubleshooting, or something else, implementing an AI solution requires careful planning and decision-making. A major decision is whether to host GenAI in the cloud or keep your data on premises. Traditional on-premises solutions can provide superior security and control, a substantial concern when dealing with large amounts of potentially sensitive data. But will supporting a GenAI solution on site be a drain on an organization’s IT budget?
In our research, we found that the value proposition is just the opposite: Hosting GenAI workloads on premises, either in a traditional Dell solution or using a managed Dell APEX pay-per-use solution, could significantly lower your GenAI costs over 3 years compared to hosting these workloads in the cloud. In fact, we found that a comparable AWS SageMaker solution would cost up to 3.8 times as much and an Azure ML solution would cost up to 3.6 times as much as GenAI on a Dell APEX pay-per-use solution. These results show that organizations looking to implement GenAI and reap the business benefits to come can find many advantages in an on-premises Dell solution, whether they opt to purchase and manage it themselves or choose a subscription-based Dell APEX pay-per-use solution. Choosing an on-premises Dell solution could save your organization significantly over hosting GenAI in the cloud, while giving you control over the security and privacy of your data as well as any updates and changes to the environment, and while ensuring your environment is managed consistently.
Workstations powered by Intel can play a vital role in CPU-intensive AI devel...Principled Technologies
In three AI development workflows, Intel processor-powered workstations delivered strong performance, without using their GPUs, making them a good choice for this part of the AI process
Conclusion
We executed three AI development workflows on tower workstations and mobile workstations from three vendors, with each workflow utilizing only the Intel CPU cores, and found that these platforms were suitable for carrying out various AI tasks. For two of the workflows, we learned that completing the tasks on the tower workstations took roughly half as much time as on the mobile workstations. This supports the idea that the tower workstations would be appropriate for a development environment for more complex models with a greater volume of data and that the mobile workstations would be well-suited for data scientists fine-tuning simpler models. In the third workflow, we explored tower workstation performance with different precision levels and learned that using 16-bit floating point precision allowed the workstations to execute the workflow in less time and also reduced memory usage dramatically. For all three AI workflows we executed, we consider the time the workstations needed to complete the tasks to be acceptable, and believe that these workstations can be appropriate, cost-effective choices for these kinds of activities.
Enable security features with no impact to OLTP performance with Dell PowerEd...Principled Technologies
Get comparable online transaction processing (OLTP) performance with or without enabling AMD Secure Memory Encryption and AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization - Encrypted State
Conclusion
You’ve likely already implemented many security measures for your servers, which may include physical security for the data center, hardware-level security, and software-level security. With the cost of data breaches high and still growing, however, wise IT teams will consider what additional security measures they may be able to implement.
AMD SME and SEV-ES are technologies that are already available within your AMD processor-powered 16th Generation Dell PowerEdge servers—and in our testing, we saw that they can offer extra layers of security without affecting performance. We compared the online transaction processing performance of a Dell PowerEdge R7625 server, powered by AMD EPYC 9274F processors, with and without these two security features enabled. We found that enabling AMD Secure Memory Encryption and Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Encrypted State did not impact performance at all.
If your team is assessing areas where you might be able to enhance security—without paying a large performance cost—consider enabling AME SME and AMD SEV-ES in your Dell PowerEdge servers.
Improving energy efficiency in the data center: Endure higher temperatures wi...Principled Technologies
In high-temperature test scenarios, a Dell PowerEdge HS5620 server continued running an intensive workload without component warnings or failures, while a Supermicro SYS‑621C-TN12R server failed
Conclusion: Remain resilient in high temperatures with the Dell PowerEdge HS5620 to help increase efficiency
Increasing your data center’s temperature can help your organization make strides in energy efficiency and cooling cost savings. With servers that can hold up to these higher everyday temperatures—as well as high temperatures due to unforeseen circumstances—your business can continue to deliver the performance your apps and clients require.
When we ran an intensive floating-point workload on a Dell PowerEdge HS5620 and a Supermicro SYS-621CTN12R in three scenario types simulating typical operations at 25°C, a fan failure, and an HVAC malfunction, the Dell server experienced no component warnings or failures. In contrast, the Supermicro server experienced warnings in all three scenario types and experienced component failures in the latter two tests, rendering the system unusable. When we inspected and analyzed each system, we found that the Dell PowerEdge HS5620 server’s motherboard layout, fans, and chassis offered cooling design advantages.
For businesses aiming to meet sustainability goals by running hotter data centers, as well as those concerned with server cooling design, the Dell PowerEdge HS5620 is a strong contender to take on higher temperatures during day-to-day operations and unexpected malfunctions.
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift: An easily deployable and powe...Principled Technologies
The 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor‑powered solution deployed in less than two hours and ran a Kubernetes container-based generative AI workload effectively
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift: An easily deployable and powe...Principled Technologies
The 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor‑powered solution deployed in less than two hours and ran a generative AI workload effectively
Conclusion
The appeal of incorporating GenAI into your organization’s operations is likely great. Getting started with an efficient solution for your next LLM workload or application can seem daunting because of the changing hardware and software landscape, but Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift powered by 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors could provide the solution you need. We started with a Dell Validated Design as a reference, and then went on to modify the deployment as necessary for our Llama 2 workload. The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift solution worked well for our LLM, and by using this deployment guide in conjunction with numerous Dell documents and some flexibility, you could be well on your way to innovating your next GenAI breakthrough.
Upgrade your cloud infrastructure with Dell PowerEdge R760 servers and VMware...Principled Technologies
Compared to a cluster of PowerEdge R750 servers running VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)
For organizations running clusters of moderately configured, older Dell PowerEdge servers with a previous version of VCF, upgrading to better-configured modern servers can provide a significant performance boost and more.
Upgrade your cloud infrastructure with Dell PowerEdge R760 servers and VMware...Principled Technologies
Compared to a cluster of PowerEdge R750 servers running VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5
If your company is struggling with underperforming infrastructure, upgrading to 16th Generation Dell PowerEdge servers running VCF 5.1 could be just what you need to handle more database throughput and reduce vSAN latencies. As an additional benefit to IT admins, we also found that the embedded VMware Aria Operation adapter provided useful infrastructure insights.
Realize 2.1X the performance with 20% less power with AMD EPYC processor-back...Principled Technologies
Three AMD EPYC processor-based two-processor solutions outshined comparable Intel Xeon Scalable processor-based solutions by handling more Redis workload transactions and requests while consuming less power
Conclusion
Performance and energy efficiency are significant factors in processor selection for servers running data-intensive workloads, such as Redis. We compared the Redis performance and energy consumption of a server cluster in three AMD EPYC two-processor configurations against that of a server cluster in two Intel Xeon Scalable two-processor configurations. In each of our three test scenarios, the server cluster backed by AMD EPYC processors outperformed the server cluster backed by Intel Xeon Scalable processors. In addition, one of the AMD EPYC processor-based clusters consumed 20 percent less power than its Intel Xeon Scalable processor-based counterpart. Combining these measurements gave us power efficiency metrics that demonstrate how valuable AMD EPYC processor-based servers could be—you could see better performance per watt with these AMD EPYC processor-based server clusters and potentially get more from your Redis or other data intensive applications and workloads while reducing data center power costs.
Improve performance and gain room to grow by easily migrating to a modern Ope...Principled Technologies
We deployed this modern environment, then migrated database VMs from legacy servers and saw performance improvements that support consolidation
Conclusion
If your organization’s transactional databases are running on gear that is several years old, you have much to gain by upgrading to modern servers with new processors and networking components and an OpenShift environment. In our testing, a modern OpenShift environment with a cluster of three Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers with 4th Generation AMD EPYC processors and high-speed 100Gb Broadcom NICs outperformed a legacy environment with MySQL VMs running on a cluster of three Dell PowerEdge R7515 servers with 3rd Generation AMD EPYC processors and 25Gb Broadcom NICs. We also easily migrated a VM from the legacy environment to the modern environment, with only a few steps required to set up and less than ten minutes of hands-on time. The performance advantage of the modern servers would allow a company to reduce the number of servers necessary to perform a given amount of database work, thus lowering operational expenditures such as power and cooling and IT staff time for maintenance. The high-speed 100Gb Broadcom NICs in this solution also give companies better network performance and networking capacity to grow as they embrace emerging technologies such as AI that put great demands on networks.
Boost PC performance: How more available memory can improve productivityPrincipled Technologies
With more memory available, system performance of three Dell devices increased, which can translate to a better user experience
Conclusion
When your system has plenty of RAM to meet your needs, you can efficiently access the applications and data you need to finish projects and to-do lists without sacrificing time and focus. Our test results show that with more memory available, three Dell PCs delivered better performance and took less time to complete the Procyon Office Productivity benchmark. These advantages translate to users being able to complete workflows more quickly and multitask more easily. Whether you need the mobility of the Latitude 5440, the creative capabilities of the Precision 3470, or the high performance of the OptiPlex Tower Plus 7010, configuring your system with more RAM can help keep processes running smoothly, enabling you to do more without compromising performance.
Deploy with confidence: VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 on next gen Dell PowerEdg...Principled Technologies
A Principled Technologies deployment guide
Conclusion
Deploying VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 on next gen Dell PowerEdge servers brings together critical virtualization capabilities and high-performing hardware infrastructure. Relying on our hands-on experience, this deployment guide offers a comprehensive roadmap that can guide your organization through the seamless integration of advanced VMware cloud solutions with the performance and reliability of Dell PowerEdge servers. In addition to the deployment efficiency, the Cloud Foundation 5.1 and PowerEdge solution delivered strong performance while running a MySQL database workload. By leveraging VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 and PowerEdge servers, you could help your organization embrace cloud computing with confidence, potentially unlocking a new level of agility, scalability, and efficiency in your data center operations.
Upgrade your cloud infrastructure with Dell PowerEdge R760 servers and VMware...Principled Technologies
Compared to a cluster of PowerEdge R750 servers running VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5
Conclusion
If your company is struggling with underperforming infrastructure, upgrading to 16th Generation Dell PowerEdge servers running VCF 5.1 could be just what you need to handle more database throughput and reduce vSAN latencies. We found that a Dell PowerEdge R760 server cluster running VCF 5.1 processed over 78 percent more TPM and 79 percent more NOPM than a Dell PowerEdge R750 server cluster running VCF 4.5. It’s also worth noting that the PowerEdge R750 cluster bottlenecked on vSAN storage, with max write latency at 8.9ms. For reference, the PowerEdge R760 cluster clocked in at 3.8ms max write latency. This higher latency is due in part to the single disk group per host on the moderately configured PowerEdge R750 cluster, while the better-configured PowerEdge R760 cluster supported four disk groups per host. As an additional benefit to IT admins, we also found that the embedded VMware Aria Operation adapter provided useful infrastructure insights.
Based on our research using publicly available materials, it appears that Dell supports nine of the ten PC security features we investigated, HP supports six of them, and Lenovo supports three features.
Increase security, sustainability, and efficiency with robust Dell server man...Principled Technologies
Compared to the Supermicro management portfolio
Conclusion
Choosing a vendor for server purchases is about more than just the hardware platform. Decision-makers must also consider more long-term concerns, including system/data security, energy efficiency, and ease of management. These concerns make the systems management tools a vendor offers as important as the hardware.
We investigated the features and capabilities of server management tools from Dell and Supermicro, comparing Dell iDRAC9 against Supermicro IPMI for embedded server management and Dell OpenManage Enterprise and CloudIQ against Supermicro Server Manager for one-to-many device and console management and monitoring. We found that the Dell management tools provided more comprehensive security, sustainability, and management/monitoring features and capabilities than Supermicro servers did. In addition, Dell tools automated more tasks to ease server management, resulting in significant time savings for administrators versus having to do the same tasks manually with Supermicro tools.
When making a server purchase, a vendor’s associated management products are critical to protect data, support a more sustainable environment, and to ease the maintenance of systems. Our tests and research showed that the Dell management portfolio for PowerEdge servers offered more features to help organizations meet these goals than the comparable Supermicro management products.
Increase security, sustainability, and efficiency with robust Dell server man...Principled Technologies
Compared to the Supermicro management portfolio
Conclusion
Choosing a vendor for server purchases is about more than just the hardware platform. Decision-makers must also consider more long-term concerns, including system/data security, energy efficiency, and ease of management. These concerns make the systems management tools a vendor offers as important as the hardware.
We investigated the features and capabilities of server management tools from Dell and Supermicro, comparing Dell iDRAC9 against Supermicro IPMI for embedded server management and Dell OpenManage Enterprise and CloudIQ against Supermicro Server Manager for one-to-many device and console management and monitoring. We found that the Dell management tools provided more comprehensive security, sustainability, and management/monitoring features and capabilities than Supermicro servers did. In addition, Dell tools automated more tasks to ease server management, resulting in significant time savings for administrators versus having to do the same tasks manually with Supermicro tools.
When making a server purchase, a vendor’s associated management products are critical to protect data, support a more sustainable environment, and to ease the maintenance of systems. Our tests and research showed that the Dell management portfolio for PowerEdge servers offered more features to help organizations meet these goals than the comparable Supermicro management products.
Scale up your storage with higher-performing Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS ...Principled Technologies
In our tests, Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS outperformed similarly configured solutions from Vendor A, achieving more IOPS, better throughput, and more consistent performance on both NVMe-supported configurations and configurations backed by Elastic Block Store (EBS) alone.
Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS supports a full NVMe backed configuration, but Vendor A doesn’t—its solution uses EBS for storage capacity and NVMe as an extended read cache—which means APEX Block Storage for AWS can deliver faster storage performance.
Scale up your storage with higher-performing Dell APEX Block Storage for AWSPrincipled Technologies
Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS offered stronger and more consistent storage performance for better business agility than a Vendor A solution
Conclusion
Enterprises desiring the flexibility and convenience of the cloud for their block storage workloads can find fast-performing solutions with the enterprise storage features they’re used to in on-premises infrastructure by selecting Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS.
Our hands-on tests showed that compared to the Vendor A solution, Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS offered stronger, more consistent storage performance in both NVMe-supported and EBS-backed configurations. Using NVMe-supported configurations, Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS achieved 4.7x the random read IOPS and 5.1x the throughput on sequential read operations per node vs. Vendor A. In our EBS-backed comparison, Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS offered 2.2x the throughput per node on sequential read operations vs. Vendor A.
Plus, the ability to scale beyond three nodes—up to 512 storage nodes with capacity of up to 8 PBs—enables Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS to help ensure performance and capacity as your team plans for the future.
Get in and stay in the productivity zone with the HP Z2 G9 Tower WorkstationPrincipled Technologies
We compared CPU performance and noise output of an HP Z2 G9 Tower Workstation in High Performance Mode to Dell Precision 3660 and 5860 tower workstations in optimized performance modes
Conclusion
HP Z2 G9 Tower Workstation users can change the BIOS settings to dial in the performance mode that best suits their needs: High Performance Mode, Performance Mode, or Quiet Mode. In good
news for both creative and technical professionals, we found that an Intel Core i9-13900 processor-powered HP Z2 G9 Tower Workstation set to High Performance mode received higher CPU-based benchmark scores than both a similarly configured Dell Precision 3660 and a Dell Precision 5860 equipped with an Intel Xeon w5-2455x processor. Plus, the HP Z2 G9 Tower Workstation was quieter while running CPU-intensive Cinebench 2024 and SPECapc for Solidworks 2022 workloads than both Dell Precision tower workstations. This means HP Z2 G9 Tower Workstation users who prize performance over everything else can do so without sacrificing a quiet workspace.
Open up new possibilities with higher transactional database performance from...Principled Technologies
In our PostgreSQL tests, R7i instances boosted performance over R6i instances with previous-gen processors
If you use the open-source PostgreSQL database to run your critical business operations, you have many cloud options from which to choose. While many of these instances can do the job, some can deliver stronger performance, which can mean getting a greater return on your cloud investment.
We conducted hands-on testing with the HammerDB TPROC-C benchmark to see how the PostgreSQL performance of Amazon EC2 R7i instances, enabled by 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, stacked up to that of R6i instances with previous-generation processors. We learned that small, medium-sized, and large R7i instances with the newer processors delivered better OLTP performance, with improvements as high as 13.8 percent. By choosing the R7i instances, your organization has the potential to support more users, deliver a better experience to those users, and even lower your cloud operating expenditures by requiring fewer instances to get the job done.
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Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
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After immersing yourself in the blue book and its red counterpart, attending DDD-focused conferences, and applying tactical patterns, you're left with a crucial question: How do I ensure my design is effective? Tactical patterns within Domain-Driven Design (DDD) serve as guiding principles for creating clear and manageable domain models. However, achieving success with these patterns requires additional guidance. Interestingly, we've observed that a set of constraints initially designed for training purposes remarkably aligns with effective pattern implementation, offering a more ‘mechanical’ approach. Let's explore together how Object Calisthenics can elevate the design of your tactical DDD patterns, offering concrete help for those venturing into DDD for the first time!
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All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
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Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
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Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
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The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
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Database performance in blade environments: Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108
1. APRIL 2016
A PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES TEST REPORT
Commissioned by Dell, Inc.
DATABASE PERFORMANCE IN BLADE ENVIRONMENTS:
DELL POWEREDGE M1000E VS. CISCO UCS 5108
p
When selecting a blade environment, strong performance is essential: It must
support the increasing demands of your database applications and its users. When a
blade environment also streamlines the task of deploying new blades and makes
efficient use of precious datacenter rack space, it becomes even more attractive.
In the Principled Technologies datacenter, we set up two VMware vSphere 6
environments: one on a Dell PowerEdge M1000e enclosure with Brocade M6505 16Gb
Fibre Channel switches and Dell PowerEdge M630 servers powered by Intel® Xeon®
processors E5-2690 v3 and Qlogic QLE2662 16Gb Fibre Channel mezzanine cards and
the other on a Cisco UCS 5108 enclosure and Cisco UCS B200 M4 servers, both using a
Dell Storage SC9000 solution as a SAN target. We then measured the total storage IOPS,
storage throughput, and latency of the two environments. As we scaled from one to
eight blades, average performance per blade remained consistent in the 16Gb-enabled
Dell environment, while it deteriorated in the Cisco environment. Response time, an
important metric for gauging end-user experience, increased at a greater rate in the
Cisco environment.
Thanks to Dell Active System Manager (ASM), deploying a PowerEdge M630
blade with a Dell Storage SC9000 solution can be automated, potentially saving your
business valuable administration time. The design of the Dell chassis also makes for
2. A Principled Technologies test report 2Database performance in blade environments:
Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108
greater space efficiency when scaling up in the future—the solution we tested had room
for eight additional blades while the Cisco solution was already at capacity.
You might expect the better-performing, denser, and easier-to-manage Dell
solution to come at a higher cost, but the prices for the Dell and Cisco environments are
nearly equal (see Appendix B for pricing information). This means that with the Dell
environment your business will get better value for your purchase price.
BETTER PERFORMANCE AND EASIER DEPLOYMENT
In our testing, we compared the database performance of the following similarly
priced solutions in the datacenter environment:
A Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment with Dell PowerEdge M630
servers powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-2690 v3 and 16Gb Fibre
Channel switches and mezzanine cards
A Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment with up to eight Cisco UCS B200 M4
blades
Both solutions used the 16Gb-enabled Dell Storage SC9000 Array Controller, and
two SC420 12Gb SAS Enclosures All Flash - SAN and VMware vSphere 6.
We first attached the Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis to the Dell Storage
SC9000 Array Controller and SC420 all-flash array enclosures. We then gathered
baseline performance by installing a single Dell M630 blade with vSphere 6, with one
VM running a Silly Little Oracle Benchmark (SLOB) 2.2 OLTP database workload tuned to
a 70/30 percent read/write IO profile. Once we established this baseline, we scaled to
two blades, then four blades, and finally to eight blades. At each blade count, we
measured total input/output per second (IOPS) and SAN throughput.
We then removed the M1000e from the storage and attached the Cisco UCS
5108 solution to the storage via Cisco UCS 6248 Fabric Interconnects. We installed the
Cisco B200 M4 blades and repeated the database testing on the Cisco UCS 5108 blade
environment.1
Figure 1 shows how we connected our two blade environments.
1
For more information on the Dell hardware and the SLOB benchmark, see Appendix A. For detailed configuration and pricing
information, see Appendix B. For details on how we tested, see Appendix C.
3. A Principled Technologies test report 3Database performance in blade environments:
Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108
Figure 1: How we connected the two blade environments that we tested.
Greater IOPS and SAN throughput
Database workloads can demand large amounts of disk throughput to achieve
solid performance. We ran a 70/30 percent read/write workload and compared total
input/output per second (IOPS) with each blade count for our two test environments.
Figure 2 shows how IOPS scaled for the two blade environments. The Dell PowerEdge
M1000e blade environment delivered over 250,000 IOPS, 91.7 percent greater total
IOPS than the Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment and we observed no major
performance degradation on any single VM. Note that we normalized the scores to that
of the lowest-performing configuration.
Figure 2: In the IOPS and SAN
throughput tests, the Dell
PowerEdge M1000e blade
environment delivered better
performance per blade with
each blade addition.
4. A Principled Technologies test report 4Database performance in blade environments:
Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108
SAN throughput is an additional metric for determining performance scalability
in a given environment. Because throughput is a function of IOPS, normalized charts for
the two metrics are identical even though the values themselves differ. For that reason,
a normalized chart depicting the SAN throughput of the two solutions is identical to a
normalized chart depicting IOPS. Just as the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment
delivered 91.7 percent greater IOPS than the Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment with
eight blades, it also delivered 91.7 percent greater throughput.
Faster response time
Throughout the duration of the test, the 16Gb-enabled Dell PowerEdge M1000e
blade environment read and write response time increased only slightly as we increased
the blade count. In contrast, the response time of the Cisco UCS 5108 blade
environment increased dramatically as we added blades (see Figure 3). Additionally,
response time was lower for the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment at each
scale point. This means that users of the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment
would continue to get acceptable response times as the number of blades scaled. Users
of the Cisco blade environment, on the other hand, would experience increasing lags
that would require them to wait longer for their data as more blades joined the
environment.
Figure 3: With each blade
addition, the response time of
the Dell PowerEdge M1000e
blade environment increased
only slightly compared to the
Cisco UCS solution.
5. A Principled Technologies test report 5Database performance in blade environments:
Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108
Streamlined blade deployment
When IT administrators can spend less time and effort deploying a blade, they
have more time for other critical tasks. Both Dell and Cisco offer software products to
help automate blade deployment: Dell Active System Manager (ASM) and Cisco UCS
Director. In a previous comparison using a different hardware configuration, we found
that using Dell ASM was faster and required fewer overall steps than UCS Director for
deployment setup and design tasks.2
This means that with Dell ASM, your business
could finish deployment design tasks faster and save valuable administrative time for
more pressing work.
More efficient use of datacenter rack space
In addition to maintaining an acceptable level of performance for database
users and applications, companies are always looking for ways to maximize physical
space in their datacenters. The Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis, which occupies
10U of rack space, can hold up to 16 Dell PowerEdge M630 blades. That means each
server actually occupies less than 1U. The 16 Dell PowerEdge M630 blades offer up to
32 Intel Xeon E5-2690 v3 processors with 12 cores each. This kind of density can pack an
enormous amount of computing power into a small space.
The Cisco blade environment, which occupies 6U of rack space, holds eight
blades. It also requires 2U of rack space to house fabric interconnects, which the
PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis does not.3
This means that to match the 16-blade
compute capacity of the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment, your business
would need two Cisco UCS 5108 chassis. That’s 14U of space, or 4U more, in your
datacenter to match the full capacity of the Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis. While our
test compared only eight blade servers in each solution, the Cisco UCS solution was
already full. This means the moment your business needs to add a ninth blade server,
the Cisco UCS solution would require another 6U of datacenter space. In contrast, the
Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment would stay the same, resulting in 28.6
percent less rack space requirement than the Cisco solution—a factor that can translate
to future savings.
2
Another Principled Technologies study found deployment advantages of using Dell ASM vs. Cisco UCS Director. For more
information, visit www.principledtechnologies.com/Dell/Dell_ASM_simplify_deployment_0415.pdf
3
On the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis, the fabric interconnects are rear-mounted modules and use no rack space.
6. A Principled Technologies test report 6Database performance in blade environments:
Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108
CONCLUSION
Scalable and reliable compute performance, in conjunction with your 16Gb
Fibre Channel capability with SAN-based storage, means you don’t have to worry about
your application VMs losing performance as your business grows. In our tests, the Dell
PowerEdge M1000e blade environment delivered up to 91.7 percent greater
throughput while running a virtualized OLTP database workload than the similarly priced
Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment. More importantly, the Dell M1000e blade
environment delivered consistent scaling as we added blade servers, in contrast to the
performance degradation we observed in the Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment. The
Dell M1000e also left room to grow within the 10U, with eight additional half-height
slots available for compute nodes in the future, whereas the Cisco UCS 5108 blade
environment would require a second enclosure to house additional blades. Finally, both
solutions were similarly priced, so there is no additional cost associated with the
advantages of the Dell environment. For applications demanding dense compute
environments, high throughput, and lower response rates, companies will find the Dell
PowerEdge M1000e blade environment better able to scale to meet predictable
performance requirements as their business grows.
7. A Principled Technologies test report 7Database performance in blade environments:
Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108
APPENDIX A – ABOUT THE COMPONENTS
About the Dell PowerEdge M1000e
Dell designed the PowerEdge M1000e blade enclosure to help reduce the cost and complexity of managing
blade resources. According to Dell, this enclosure boasts the following:
Powerful integrated management tools.
Flexible remote management via the Chassis Management Controller, which lets you control entire
blade infrastructure, in a single data center or around the world.
Outstanding efficiency that leads to increased capacity, lower operating costs, and better performance
per watt.
A flexible and scalable system that lets you expand easily
Advanced input/output (I/O) functionality
Simplified product integration
Enhanced systems management
For more information about the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade enclosure, visit
www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-m1000e/pd
About the Dell PowerEdge M630 server nodes
According to Dell, the PowerEdge M630 blade server “offers flexibility to optimize in-server storage and IO
performance, allowing you to tailor your servers to your workloads today and adapt as your needs change over time.”
The optional 12Gb PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) doubles the throughput and cache of previous
generations and can dramatically boost IO for applications. The M630 supports up to four 1.8-inch SSDs or up to two 2.5-
inch HDDs or Express Flash PCIe SSDs. Dell Select Network Adapters with 16Gb Fibre Channel capability offer quick
access to the storage resources your server or cloud requires, via either NAS or SAN.
For more information about the Dell PowerEdge M630 blade server, visit
www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-m630/pd.
About the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3 product family
According to Intel, the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3 product family “helps IT address the growing demands
placed on infrastructure, from supporting business growth to enabling new services faster, delivering new applications in
the enterprise, technical computing, communications, storage, and cloud.” It also delivers benefits in performance,
power efficiency, virtualization, and security.
The E5-2600 v3 product family has up to 50 percent more cores and cache than processors from the previous
generation. Other features include the following:
Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (AVX2)
Intel Quick Path Interconnect link
Up to 18 cores and 36 threads per socket
Up to 45 MB of last-level cache
Next-generation DDR4 memory support
Intel Integrated I/O providing up to 80 PCIe lanes per two-socket server
8. A Principled Technologies test report 8Database performance in blade environments:
Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108
Intel AES-NI data encryption/decryption
The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3 product family also uses Intel Intelligent Power technology and Per-core P
states to maximize energy efficiency.
Learn more at www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/xeon/xeon-e5-brief.html.
About the Dell SC9000 storage array
Dell designed the SC9000 as an ideal solution for large-scale storage, high-end workloads, and distributed
enterprise environments. According to Dell, this latest flagship array offers all the capabilities of the SC Series line in a
fully upgraded, more scalable system leveraging Dell’s 13G server platform.
16Gb Fibre Channel capability provides a massive network pipe for achieving the throughput needed to
take full advantage of the all-flash performance.
Quick, modular expansion to over 3PB raw SAN and/or NAS storage capacity per array, and the ability to
be interconnected with other SC Series arrays in larger federated systems under unified management.
Superior flash and hybrid performance. Comprehensive SSD integration plus a wide range of HDDs and
ultra-dense enclosures provide flexible performance.
Always available storage with automated cost savings. Ideal for private cloud deployments, the SC Series
Live Volume feature now offers seamless disaster recovery with transparent auto-failover to fully
synchronized backup volumes on another SC series array.
Live Volume with auto-failover keeps workloads running continuously during unplanned outages and
repairs your high-availability environment automatically when an array comes back online. No extra
hardware or software is required.
Application Protection Manager Suite ensures server-side data integrity in Oracle, VMware and
Microsoft database environments. Optional FIPS-certified self-encrypting SSDs and HDDs protect against
data theft, loss or unauthorized access.
Built-in efficiencies include new block-level compression on all-flash arrays and pervasive “thin”
methods. Patented auto-tiering leverages the best attributes of diverse drive types to optimize your
data throughout its lifecycle.
Redundant, hot-swappable components make the SC9000 a resilient, easy-to-deploy and highly
available solution. Add capacity quickly with any of five supported expansion enclosures. Customize I/O
connections to multiprotocol SANs (FC, iSCSI and FCoE) and support file storage from the same pool via
the optional FS8600 NAS appliance.
Learn more at www.dell.com/us/business/p/storage-sc9000/pd
About the SLOB 2.2 benchmark
The Silly Little Oracle Benchmark (SLOB) can assess Oracle random physical I/O capability on a given platform in
preparation for potential OLTP/ERP-style workloads by measuring IOPS capacity. The benchmark helps evaluate
performance of server hardware and software, storage system hardware and firmware, and storage networking
hardware and firmware.
SLOB contains simple PL/SQL and offers the ability to test the following:
9. A Principled Technologies test report 9Database performance in blade environments:
Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108
1. Oracle logical read (SGA buffer gets) scaling
2. Physical random single-block reads (db file sequential read)
3. Random single block writes (DBWR flushing capacity)
4. Extreme REDO logging I/O
SLOB is free of application contention yet is an SGA-intensive benchmark. According to SLOB’s creator Kevin
Closson, SLOB can also offer more than testing IOPS capability such as studying host characteristics via NUMA and
processor threading. For more information on SLOB, links to information on version 2.2, and links to download the
benchmark, visit kevinclosson.net/2012/02/06/introducing-slob-the-silly-little-oracle-benchmark/.
10. A Principled Technologies test report 10Database performance in blade environments:
Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108
APPENDIX B – SYSTEM CONFIGURATION AND PRICING INFORMATION
Figures 4 through 7 provide detailed configuration information for the test systems. Figure 8 provides detailed
configuration information for the storage array.
System Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade enclosure
Power supplies
Number of power supplies 6
Vendor and model number Dell C2700A-S0
Wattage of each (W) 2,700
Cooling fans
Total number of fan modules 8
Vendor and model number Dell YK776 Rev. A00
Chassis firmware
Primary Firmware version 5.11
Hardware Version A00
I/O modules
Switch Dell Networking MXL 10/40GbE
Occupied bay A1, A2
Fibre Channel Switch Brocade M6505
Occupied bay B1, B2
Figure 4: Configuration information for the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade enclosure.
System Dell PowerEdge M630 server
Enclosure
Blade enclosure Dell PowerEdge M1000e
General
Number of processor packages 2
Number of cores per processor 12
Number of hardware threads per core 2
System power management policy Default
CPU
Vendor Intel
Name Xeon
Model number E5-2690 v3
Stepping M1
Socket type FCLGA2011-3
Core frequency (GHz) 2.6
Bus frequency (GHz) 9.6
L1 cache 768 KB
L2 cache 3,072 KB
L3 cache 30 MB
11. A Principled Technologies test report 11Database performance in blade environments:
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System Dell PowerEdge M630 server
Platform
Vendor and model number Dell PowerEdge M630
Motherboard model number OJXJPT
BIOS version 1.4.5
Mezzanine card Dell QLE 2662 Dual Port Fibre Channel HBA
Integrated LOM Broadcom 57810S
Memory module(s)
Total RAM in system (GB) 64
Vendor and model number Hynix Semiconductor Inc.(r) HMA41GR7MFR8N-TF
Type PC4-17000
Speed (MHz) 2,133
Speed running in the system (MHz) 2,133
Size (GB) 16
Number of RAM module(s) 4
Chip organization Double-sided
Rank Dual
RAID controller
Vendor and model number Dell PERC H730 Mini
Firmware version 25.2.1.0037
Firmware
Lifecycle Controller / iDRAC 2.21.21.21
Driver Pack 14.05.04, X04
Figure 5: Configuration information for the Dell PowerEdge M630 blade server.
System Cisco UCS 5108 blade enclosure
Power supplies
Number of power supplies 4
Vendor and model number Cisco Systems Inc. UCSB-PSU-2500ACPL
Wattage of each (W) 2,500
Cooling fans
Total number of fan modules 8
Vendor and model number Cisco Systems Inc. N20-FAN5
Chassis firmware
Board Controller 5.0
CIMC Controller 2.2(3c)
IOM firmware 2.2(3g)
I/O modules
Switch Cisco UCS 2208XP
Occupied bay 1, 2
Figure 6: Configuration information for the Cisco UCS 5108 blade enclosure.
12. A Principled Technologies test report 12Database performance in blade environments:
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System Cisco UCS B200 M4 server
Enclosure
Blade enclosure Cisco UCS 5108
General
Number of processor packages 2
Number of cores per processor 12
Number of hardware threads per core 2
System power management policy Default
CPU
Vendor Intel
Name Xeon
Model number E5-2690 v3
Stepping M1
Socket type FCLGA2011-3
Core frequency (GHz) 2.6
Bus frequency (GHz) 9.6
L1 cache 768 KB
L2 cache 3072 KB
L3 cache 30 MB
Platform
Vendor and model number Cisco UCS B200 M4
Motherboard model number UCSB-B200-M4
BIOS version B200M4.2.2.3c.0.101420141352
Modular LAN on Motherboard (mLOM) adapter Cisco UCS VIC 1340 (UCSB-MLOM-40G-03)
Memory module(s)
Total RAM in system (GB) 64
Vendor and model number Hynix Semiconductor Inc. UCS-MR-1X162RU-A
Type PC4-17000
Speed (MHz) 2,133
Speed running in the system (MHz) 2,133
Size (GB) 16
Number of RAM module(s) 4
Chip organization Double-sided
Rank Dual
RAID controller
Vendor and model number Cisco Systems Inc. UCSB-MRAID12G
Firmware version 24.5.0-0021
Firmware
CIMC 2.2(3C)
Board Controller 5.0
BIOS B200M4.2.2.3c.0.101420141352
Cisco UCS VIC 1340 4.0(1c)
Figure 7: Configuration information for the blade server.
13. A Principled Technologies test report 13Database performance in blade environments:
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System Dell Storage SC9000
Storage Array
Vendor and model number Dell Storage SC9000
OS Version Storage Center 6.7.5
Connection type Fibre Channel
Number of Fibre Channel cards 1 per controller (2 total)
Fibre Channel card model QLogic® QLE2662 16G Fibre Channel Adapter
Number of SAS cards 2 per controller (4 total)
SAS card model SAS9300-8E 12G SAS Dual-Ext Port Adapter
Number of expansion enclosures 2
Expansion enclosure model number SC420
Number of disks per shelf 24
Type of disk SSD
Disk capacity 400 GB
Figure 8: Configuration information for the Dell Storage SC9000 storage array.
Figure 9 provides pricing information for 8 and 16 blades in both environments. While we tested only the 8-blade
configurations, we provide the pricing for the 16-blade configurations to show the cost difference and potential savings
you would see in the Dell environment when expanding the configuration, which would require a second chassis for the
Cisco solution.
Dell 8 blades (as tested) 16 blades
Component Cost per unit Quantity Total Quantity Total
Dell Networking S4810 switch $5,414.86 2 $10,829.72 2 $10,829.72
Brocade 6505 12-24 Port FC16 Switch $8,625.00 2 $17,250.00 2 $17,250.00
Dell PowerEdge M630 $7,010.00 8 $56,080.00 16 $112,160.00
Dell ASM $159.00 8 $1,272.00 16 $2,544.00
Dell PowerEdge M1000E chassis $9,836.00 1 $9,836.00 1 $9,836.00
Total $95,267.72 $152,619.72
Cisco 8 blades (as tested) 16 blades
Cost per unit Quantity Total Quantity Total
Cisco UCS 5108 Chassis + 8 Cisco UCS
B200 M4 blades $59,967.65 1 $59,967.65 2 $119,935.30
Cisco UCS 6248UP Fabric Interconnect
with two Cisco UCS 2208XP FEX
modules
$18,560.01
2 $37,120.02 2 $37,120.02
Total $97,087.67 $157,055.32
Figure 9: Pricing information for 8 and 16 blades in the two environments.
14. A Principled Technologies test report 14Database performance in blade environments:
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APPENDIX C – HOW WE TESTED
Installing VMware vSphere onto the blade servers
Before installing VMware vSphere onto the blades, we set the System Profile to Performance-per-watt (OS) on
all Dell blades. We installed the VMware vSphere 6.0 hypervisor onto the blade servers’ local hard drives, which we
placed in a RAID1 pair.
1. Using the virtual KVM console, connect to the first blade server and attach the VMware vSphere 6.0
installation ISO to the virtual optical drive.
2. Boot the blade server to the VMware vSphere installer.
3. Press F11 to begin the installation wizard.
4. Select the RAID1 pair as the installation location.
5. Select US English as the keyboard type and language.
6. Enter the root password for the host.
7. Press Enter to start the installation.
8. When the installation completes press Enter to reboot the host.
9. After the host reboots, set the management network IP address.
10. Add the host to vCenter and enable SSH and ESXi shell.
11. Navigate to the host settings, and select Power Management.
12. Change the Power Management policy to High Performance.
Configuring the Fibre Channel networking
On the Dell M1000e chassis, we connected the 16Gb-enabled Dell Storage SC9000 to the Brocade M6505 16Gb
Fibre Channel switches in the rear of the chassis. We left the switch ports at factory settings and created zones for traffic
isolation. On the Cisco UCS chassis, we connected the storage directly to the Fabric Interconnects and placed the Fabric
Interconnects in switch mode.
Configuring zoning on the Brocade M6505 switches
1. In a web browser, connect to the first Brocade M6505 switch and log in as the admin user.
2. Click Configure→Zone Admin.
3. In the Zone tab, create the following zones:
a. All visible physical ports on the SC9000
b. All visible virtual ports on the SC9000
c. Server 1 HBA 1 and all four visible virtual ports
i. Repeat Step C for remaining servers.
4. In the Zone Config tab, click New Zone Config and give it a name.
5. Add the newly created Zones to the Zone Config.
6. Click Save Config.
7. Click Enable Config.
8. Repeat the zoning process on the second Brocade M6505 for HBA 2.
15. A Principled Technologies test report 15Database performance in blade environments:
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Configuring the storage
After initial cabling and configuration of the Dell Storage SC9000, we disabled the read and write cache and
created six volumes. Each volume contained the respective VMDKs for each VM. For example, the OS volume contained
all the OS VMDKs. We had one OS volume, four Data volumes, and on volume for Logs. The data remained in the
highest-performance RAID10 tier throughout testing.
Creating a server cluster and connecting the volumes
1. In a web browser, connect to the Storage Center virtual IP address and log in as the Admin user.
2. Click Storage Management→Servers→Create Server. Select the two HBA WWNs that correspond to the first
blade server. Give the server a name and click continue.
3. Repeat Step 2 for the remaining blade servers.
4. Click Storage Management→Servers→Create Server Cluster. Click Add Existing Servers to Cluster. Select all
servers and click Continue.
5. Click Storage Management→Volumes→Create Volume. Give the volume a size. Use 3.85 TB for the OS and
Data volumes, and 2.71 TB for the Logs volume.
6. Repeat Step 5 for the remaining volumes (one OS, four Data, and one Logs).
7. Click Storage Management→Volume→Map volume to server. Select the first volume and click Continue.
Select the server cluster and click Continue.
8. Using VMware vCenter, ensure that all volumes are showing as connected to each server. Rebooting the
servers and chassis may be necessary to propagate all changes.
Configuring the host HBA settings
Run the following commands on each Dell PowerEdge M630 blade server to adjust the HBA queue depth and
round robin pathing settings:
esxcli system module parameters set -m qlnativefc -p "ql2xmaxqdepth=255
ql2xloginretrycount=60 qlport_down_retry=60"
esxcli storage nmp device set --device=naa.* --psp=VMW_PSP_RR
esxcli storage nmp psp roundrobin deviceconfig set --device naa.* --
type=iops --iops=3
Run the following commands on each UCS B200 M4 blade server to adjust the HBA queue depth and round
robin pathing settings:
esxcli system module parameters set -m fnic -p "fnic_max_qdepth=128"
esxcli storage nmp device set --device=naa.* --psp=VMW_PSP_RR
esxcli storage nmp psp roundrobin deviceconfig set --device naa.* --
type=iops --iops=3
Complete the following steps to adjust the IO Throttle Count on each UCS B200 M4 blade server:
16. A Principled Technologies test report 16Database performance in blade environments:
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1. In UCS Manager, click the Servers tab.
2. Expand Policies→Root→Adapter policies and select the active policy or create a new policy.
3. In the Options section, set the IO Throttle Count to 1024.
4. Click Save Changes.
Creating the workload virtual machines – SLOB
Creating the VM
1. In VMware vCenter, navigate to Virtual Machines.
2. Click the icon to create a new VM.
3. Leave Create a new virtual machine selected, and click Next.
4. Enter a name for the virtual machine, and click Next.
5. Place the VM on a host with available CPUs, and click Next.
6. Select the OS datastore for the 50GB OS VMDK, and click next.
7. Click Next.
8. Select the guest OS as Oracle Enterprise Linux 6, and click Next.
9. In the Customize Hardware section, make the following changes:
a. Increase the vCPUs to 8.
b. Increase the memory to 32GB.
c. Add a 50GB VMDK for Oracle data and select the VMware Paravirtual controller and Thick
Provisioned Eager Zeroed. Place the VMDK in one of the DATA datastores.
d. Repeat the previous step to add a 50GB VMDK to each DATA datastore, for four data VMDKs.
e. Add a 35GB VMDK for Oracle logs and select the VMware Paravirtual controller and Thick
Provisioned Eager Zeroed. Place the VMDK in the LOGS datastore.
10. Connect the VM to the test network.
11. Click Next.
12. Click Finish.
13. Follow the instructions below to install the guest OS.
Installing Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.5
1. Attach the installation ISO to the VM, and boot to it.
2. Select Install or upgrade an existing system.
3. If you are unsure of the fidelity of the installation disk, select OK to test the installation media; otherwise,
select Skip.
4. In the opening splash screen, select Next.
5. Choose the language you wish to use, and click Next.
6. Select the keyboard layout, and click Next.
7. Select Basic Storage Devices, and click Next.
8. Select Fresh Installation, and click Next.
9. Insert the hostname, and select Configure Network.
10. In the Network Connections menu, configure network connections.
17. A Principled Technologies test report 17Database performance in blade environments:
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11. After configuring the network connections, click Close.
12. Click Next.
13. Select the nearest city in your time zone, and click Next.
14. Enter the root password, and click Next.
15. Select Use All Space, and click Next.
16. When the installation prompts you to confirm that you are writing changes to the disk, select Write changes
to disk.
17. Select Software Basic Server, and click Next. Oracle Enterprise Linux installation begins.
18. When the installation completes, select Reboot to restart the server.
Installing VMware Tools
1. Right-click the VM in the Web Client, and select Install/Upgrade VMware Tools.
2. Log on to the guest as root.
3. Mount the CD ROM device:
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt
4. Untar VMware Tools into a temporary directory:
tar –C /tmp –zxf /mnt/VMwareTools-9.4.0-1280544.tar.gz
5. Run the install script and accept the defaults:
/tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl
6. Follow the prompts to configure and install VMware tools.
7. The installer will automatically load the NIC drivers, create a new initrd, and unmount the CD.
8. Reboot the VM.
Initial configuration tasks
Complete the following steps to provide the functionality that Oracle Database requires. We performed all of
these tasks as root.
1. Disable firewall services. In the command line (as root), type:
service iptables stop
chkconfig iptables off
service ip6tables stop
chkconfig ip6tables off
2. Edit /etc/selinux/config:
SELINUX=permissive
3. Modify /etc/hosts to include the IP address of the internal IP and the hostname.
4. Edit /etc/security/limits.d/90-nproc.conf:
Change this:
* soft nproc 1024
To this:
* - nproc 16384
5. Install 12c RPM packages, resolve package dependencies, and modify kernel parameters:
yum install oracle-rdbms-server-12cR1-preinstall –y
6. Install automatic system tuning for database storage through yum:
yum install tuned
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chkconfig tuned on
tuned-adm profile enterprise-storage
7. Using yum, install the following prerequisite packages for Oracle Database:
yum install elfutils-libelf-devel
yum install xhost
yum install unixODBC
yum install unixODBC-devel
yum install oracleasm-support oracleasmlib oracleasm
8. Create the oracle user account and groups and password:
groupadd -g 1003 oper
groupadd -g 1004 asmadmin
groupadd -g 1005 asmdba
groupadd -g 1006 asmoper
usermod -G dba,oper,asmadmin,asmdba,asmoper oracle
passwd oracle
9. Create the /u01 directory for Oracle inventory and software and give it to the oracle user:
mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/grid_1
mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/dbhome_1
chown -R oracle:oinstall /u01
chmod -R 775 /u01
10. Edit bash profiles to set up user environments:
# vim /home/oracle/.bash_profile
# Oracle Settings
export TMP=/tmp
export TMPDIR=$TMP
export ORACLE_HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain
export ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle
export GRID_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/12.1.0/grid_1
export DB_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/12.1.0/dbhome_1
export ORACLE_HOME=$DB_HOME
export ORACLE_SID=orcl
export ORACLE_TERM=xterm
export BASE_PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$BASE_PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib
export
CLASSPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/JRE:$ORACLE_HOME/jlib:$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/j
lib
alias grid_env='. /home/oracle/grid_env'
alias db_env='. /home/oracle/db_env'
# vim /home/oracle/grid_env
export ORACLE_SID=+ASM1
export ORACLE_HOME=$GRID_HOME
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$BASE_PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib
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export
CLASSPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/JRE:$ORACLE_HOME/jlib:$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/j
lib
# vim /home/oracle/db_env
export ORACLE_SID=orcl
export ORACLE_HOME=$DB_HOME
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$BASE_PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib
export
CLASSPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/JRE:$ORACLE_HOME/jlib:$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/j
lib
Adding the log and four data drives to the VM and modifying the vmfx file
1. Power off the VM.
2. Right-click the VM in the vSphere Web Client, and choose Edit Settings…
3. Click on the VM Options tab, and expand the Advanced menu option.
4. Choose Edit Configuration…
5. Click Add Row, and enter disk.EnableUUID in the parameter field and TRUE in the value field.
6. Go back to the Virtual Hardware tab.
7. Click the drop-down menu for New device, and choose New Hard Disk.
8. Name the Hard Disk and choose the size that you want it to be.
9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 for all remaining drives.
10. Click OK.
11. Power the VM back on.
Configuring disks for ASM
1. For each of the five shared disks, create a GPT label, and create one partition. For example, see the following
shell script:
for disk in sdc sdd sde sdf sdg; do
parted /dev/$disk mklabel gpt
parted /dev/$disk mkpart primary "1 -1"
done
2. If desired, label the disk’s partition with its Oracle function. For example:
parted /dev/sdc name 1 DATA1
parted /dev/sdd name 1 DATA2
parted /dev/sde name 1 DATA3
parted /dev/sdf name 1 DATA4
parted /dev/sdg name 1 LOG1
3. Initialize Oracle ASM on each server by executing the following commands as root on each node.
oracleasm init
oracleasm configure -e -u grid -g oinstall -s y -x sda
4. Label each shared disk-partition with an appropriate ASM name. For example, following the OS partition
names created above, execute the following commands on one system:
20. A Principled Technologies test report 20Database performance in blade environments:
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oracleasm createdisk DATA1 /dev/sdc1
oracleasm createdisk DATA2/dev/sdd1
oracleasm createdisk DATA3 /dev/sde1
oracleasm createdisk DATA4 /dev/sdf1
oracleasm createdisk LOG1 /dev/sdg1
5. On each server, scan the disks to make the disks immediately available to Oracle ASM.
oracleasm scandisks
oracleasm listdisks
Installing Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c
1. Log in as the oracle user.
2. Unzip linuxamd64_12c_grid_1of2.zip and linuxamd64_12c_grid_2of2.zip
3. Open a terminal to the unzipped database directory.
4. Type grid_env to set the Oracle grid environment.
5. To start the installer, type./runInstaller
6. At the Updates screen, select Skip updates.
7. In the Select Installation Option screen, select Install and Configure Grid Infrastructure for a Standalone
Server, and click Next.
8. Choose the language, and click Next.
9. In the Create ASM Disk Group screen, choose the Disk Group Name, and change redundancy to External.
10. Select the four disks that you are planning to use for the database, and click Next.
11. In the Specify ASM Password screen, choose Use same password for these accounts, write the passwords for
the ASM users, and click Next.
12. Leave the default Operating System Groups, and click Next.
13. Leave the default installation, and click Next.
14. Leave the default inventory location, and click Next.
15. Under Root script execution, select Automatically run configuration scripts and enter root credentials.
16. In the Prerequisite Checks screen, make sure that there are no errors.
17. In the Summary screen, verify that everything is correct, and click Finish to install Oracle Grid Infrastructure.
18. At one point during the installation, the installation prompts you to execute two configuration scripts as
root. Follow the instructions to run the scripts.
19. At the Finish screen, click Close.
20. To run the ASM Configuration Assistant, type asmca.
21. In the ASM Configuration Assistant, click Create.
22. In the Create Disk Group window, name the new disk group log, choose redundancy External (None), and
select the log disk for redo logs.
23. Click Advanced Options, and type 12.1.0.0.0 in ASM Compatibility and Database Compatibility. Click OK.
24. Right-click the DATA drive, and choose Edit Attributes. Make sure both ASM and Database Compatibility
fields list 12.1.0.0.0, and click OK.
25. Exit the ASM Configuration Assistant.
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Installing Oracle Database 12c
1. Unzip linuxamd64_12c_database_1_of_2.zip and
linuxamd64_12c_database_2_of_2.zip.
2. Open a terminal to the unzipped database directory.
3. Type db_env to set the Oracle database environment.
4. Run ./runInstaller.sh.
5. Wait until the GUI installer loads.
6. On the Configure Security Updates screen, enter the credentials for My Oracle Support. If you do not have
an account, uncheck the box I wish to receive security updates via My Oracle Support, and click Next.
7. At the warning, click Yes.
8. On the Download Software Updates screen, enter the desired update option, and click Next.
9. On the Select Installation Option screen, select Install database software only, and click Next.
10. On the Grid Installation Options screen, select Single instance database installation, and click Next.
11. On the Select Product Languages screen, leave the default setting of English, and click Next.
12. On the Select Database Edition screen, select Enterprise Edition, and click Next.
13. On the Specify Installation Location, leave the defaults, and click Next.
14. On the Create Inventory screen, leave the default settings, and click Next.
15. On the Privileged Operating System groups screen, keep the defaults, and click Next.
16. Allow the prerequisite checker to complete.
17. On the Summary screen, click Install.
18. Once the Execute Configuration scripts prompt appears, ssh into the server as root, and run the following
command:
/home/oracle/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/dbhome_1/root.sh
19. Return to the prompt, and click OK.
20. Once the installer completes, click Close.
Adding hugepages
In Putty, edit /etc/sysctl.conf by adding the following lines:
vm.nr_hugepages = 13312
vm.hugetlb_shm_group = 1001
Creating and configuring the database
1. Using Putty with X11 forwarding enabled, SSH to the VM.
2. Type dbca, and press Enter to open the Database configuration assistant.
3. At the Database Operation screen, select Create Database, and click Next.
4. Under Creation Mode, select Advanced Mode, and click Next.
5. At the Select Template screen, select General Purpose or Transaction Processing. Click Next.
6. Enter a Global database name and the appropriate SID.
7. At the Management Options screen, select Configure Enterprise Manager (EM) Database Express. Click Next.
8. At the Database Credentials screen, select Use the Same Administrative Password for All Accounts. Enter a
password, and click Next.
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9. At the Network Configuration screen, click Next.
10. At the Storage Configuration screen, select Automatic Storage Management, and select +DATA as the
Database.
11. At the Database Options screen, click Next.
12. At the Initialization Parameters screen, click use Automatic Memory Management. Choose a database block
size of 32KB.
13. At the Creation Options screen, select Create Database, and click Next.
14. At the summary screen, click Finish.
15. Close the Database Configuration Assistant.
16. In a Web browser, browse to https://vm.ip.address:5500/em to open the database manager.
17. Log in as system with the password you specified.
18. Go to StorageTablespaces.
19. Click Create.
20. Enter SLOB as the Name, and check the Set As Default box. Click OK.
21. Go to StorageRedo Log Groups.
22. Click ActionsSwitch file… until you get one of the groups to go inactive.
23. Highlight the inactive group, and click ActionsDrop group.
24. In Putty, enter sqlplus and type ALTER DATABASE ADD LOGFILE GROUP 3
('+logs/orcl/onlinelog/redox.log') SIZE 9G BlOCKSIZE 4k; where x is the number of
the log file (1, 2, etc.).
25. Repeat steps 21 – 24 until all default logs are dropped, and two new ones exist.
26. Click on ConfigurationInitialization Parameters
27. Change the use_large_pages parameter to Only.
Installing SLOB and populating the database
1. Download the SLOB kit from www.kevinclosson.net/slob/.
2. Copy and untar the files to /home/oracle/dev/.
3. Type ./setup.sh SLOB 128 to start the data population to the SLOB tablespace we created earlier.
4. When the setup is complete, the database is populated.
Running the performance test
To run the SLOB workload, we first rebooted all hosts and VMs and waited 20 minutes to allow the servers to
reach full idle. We ran the production-level workload with ./runit.sh 128, 0ms think time and 0 update percent.
23. A Principled Technologies test report 23Database performance in blade environments:
Dell PowerEdge M1000e vs. Cisco UCS 5108
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