Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations consisting of Dell PowerEdge R720 servers, Dell Force10 S4810P switches, and Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage provide a range of configuration options so that you can select the one that is right for your business needs. Additionally, each configuration is easily scalable to accommodate for business growth.
The 3-2-1 base configuration provides a robust solution for any business needing to support up to 500 users on multiple business applications. Our tests demonstrate this solution supporting 500 users per VM for four VMs including two database VMs, one email VM, and one collaboration application VM.
If the number of users you need to support exceeds the user count the base configuration provides, adding another Dell PowerEdge R720 server to make a 4-2-1 configuration can support up to 1,000 users on multiple business applications while maintaining high availability. Our tests demonstrate this solution supporting 1,000 users per VM in the same four VMs as the 3-2-1 solution. Additionally, these configurations are so easy to scale upward that you can complete the process of adding a server in a matter of two hours or less from start to finish.
If you require support for an even higher number of users, adding a server and storage array to the base configuration, to make a 4-2-2 configuration allows for up to 1,500 users on multiple business applications. Our tests demonstrated this when we ran 1,500 users against each of the four VMs. Better yet, adding a Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage array to an existing 4-2-1 configuration is a cinch, taking under 30 minutes start to finish.
All of these Dell Reference Configurations give your business the reliability of highly available hardware configurations, greatly reducing downtime resulting from any hardware malfunctions.
By choosing proven Dell architecture, you avoid the hassles of putting your infrastructure together piece by piece, reducing the potential for error and providing you with a sturdy solution that is easily scalable to fit your present and future needs.
Dell PowerEdge R920 and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Migration and Benefits GuidePrincipled Technologies
The latest Dell PowerEdge R920 server is designed to provide highly scalable performance for large enterprises, with greater memory capacity, improved and expanded attached storage options, and processor architectures designed for high availability. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the perfect companion software to take advantage of the Dell PowerEdge R920’s impressive specifications. Upgrading has never looked more attractive, and with hardware/software upgrades must come data migration.
Migrating legacy database applications to the latest database technologies on newer Dell server platforms is a common task for businesses upgrading their hardware/software stack. As this guide shows, the process is straightforward and the cost benefits can be enormous. We calculated the savings attainable from multiple consolidation ratios, as well as how long it would take to pay off the replacement server. We found that a consolidation ratio of 13 to 1 could yield $531,725 in software savings, many times the cost of the replacement hardware itself. So not only will the business benefit from the massively-scalable current-generation Dell server technology paired with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 running SQL Server 2014, but you can save money in the process.
Managing clients with Dell Client Integration Pack 3.0 and Microsoft System C...Principled Technologies
Client management is an important part of any enterprise. Employees have workstations in their offices or notebooks that travel with them around the globe, and efficient updates and remote management capabilities keep an organization’s IT assets ordered and secure. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 can provide a robust, efficient, management system for your IT infrastructure. Selecting clients that not only operate within your IT framework, but that have built-in software to integrate with it seamlessly to make client management tasks even easier is an intelligent strategy for your IT department.
In our tests, we found that Dell client management tools (Dell Client Integration Pack, Dell Client Configuration Toolkit, and Dell OpenManage Client Instrumentation) integrated in a typical SCCM 2012 environment reduced the steps it took to complete client management tasks by as much as 77 percent, and included a number of features that weren’t available with clients from HP and Lenovo.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Scalable performance and simplicity in s...Principled Technologies
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations provide a range of virtualized infrastructure solutions to meet your business’s needs today and in the future. Easy to deploy, manage, and upgrade, these robust solutions can grow as your business does, all the while reducing the likelihood of extended downtime due to their highly available architecture.
Resource balancing comparison: VMware vSphere 6 vs. Red Hat Enterprise Virtua...Principled Technologies
Having ample resources to handle user requests is a necessity of modern virtualization solutions. Allocating and distributing those resources evenly, however, is imperative to the success of your business’s virtualized environment. In our tests, after powering on the other two servers in our three-node cluster and adding resource management features, VMware vSphere 6 improved performance by 183 percent over its baseline configuration of one active server and no resource management features. RHEV 3.5, in contrast, delivered only a 79 percent increase over its baseline. As you design your business’s infrastructure and applications, improvements such as those offered by VMware vSphere 6 DRS and Storage DRS can play a critical role by offering your users better application experiences. Optimized and modern resource management provided by VMware DRS can also help to lower your IT purchase and maintenance costs by reducing the number of servers necessary to run your applications.
Database performance and memory capacity with the Intel Xeon processor E5-266...Principled Technologies
The Dell PowerEdge M620 offers 24 memory slots, 50 percent more than the 16 slots offered by the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8, which enables the Dell solution to provide greater performance while delivering memory error protection. We found that the Dell PowerEdge M620 solution, built on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600v2 Series, delivered 182.2 percent more database performance and 92.0 percent faster response times than the previous version Intel Xeon E5-2640 processor-based HP ProLiant BL460c Gen 8 solution, while providing 12.5 percent more available memory and error protection. The additional memory capacity of the Dell solution allowed us to engage FRM technologies and still have more overall RAM capacity compared to the 16-slot HP server. The Dell PowerEdge M620 offered maximum memory capacity and protection with Fault Resilient Memory to keep your database workloads running strong and available for your business needs.
Administrators can spend a great deal of time deploying and managing computing resources, especially when dealing with ROBO environments. The Dell PowerEdge VRTX, powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 v2 product family and running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, gives administrators centralized management tools to help them provide time saving benefits and integrated toolsets.
In our hands-on testing, we found that the Dell PowerEdge VRTX greatly simplified deployment through an easy, wizard-based setup of Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clusters across server nodes with the Dell OpenManage Cluster Configurator. It also provided versatile hardware resource reassignment through a shared PCIe bus and efficient centralized management through CMC and scripting. Finally, we found that the Dell System Update Utility worked seamlessly with Microsoft Cluster-Aware Updating to update server nodes while keeping the failover cluster online and minimizing downtime. These advantages make the Dell PowerEdge VRTX an attractive choice for those who seek to reduce the management overhead of their ROBO environments.
Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 vs. VMware View 5: User experience and bandwidth consum...Principled Technologies
The document compares the user experience and bandwidth consumption of Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 and VMware View 5 for delivering virtual desktops to remote offices over bandwidth-constrained WAN connections. Testing in simulated small and medium-sized branch office environments found that with default configurations, Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 provided a better user experience than VMware View 5 while using less bandwidth, with savings of up to 16.3% in the small office scenario and up to 37.1% in the medium office scenario. Enabling features like Citrix Branch Repeater provided even further improvements to user experience and bandwidth efficiency.
Database performance: Dell PowerEdge R730xd vs. Lenovo ThinkServer RD650Principled Technologies
The document compares the database performance of the Dell PowerEdge R730xd server to the Lenovo ThinkServer RD650 server. It finds that the Dell PowerEdge R730xd delivered 27.9% more orders per minute for a Microsoft SQL Server 2014 database application than the Lenovo server. It also had lower application response times, up to 24.6% better, and lower disk response times, up to 93.1% better. The Dell server was able to process more orders per minute with faster response times for end users due to its current-generation hardware, increased solid-state drives, and storage capacity three times that of the Lenovo server.
Dell PowerEdge R920 and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Migration and Benefits GuidePrincipled Technologies
The latest Dell PowerEdge R920 server is designed to provide highly scalable performance for large enterprises, with greater memory capacity, improved and expanded attached storage options, and processor architectures designed for high availability. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the perfect companion software to take advantage of the Dell PowerEdge R920’s impressive specifications. Upgrading has never looked more attractive, and with hardware/software upgrades must come data migration.
Migrating legacy database applications to the latest database technologies on newer Dell server platforms is a common task for businesses upgrading their hardware/software stack. As this guide shows, the process is straightforward and the cost benefits can be enormous. We calculated the savings attainable from multiple consolidation ratios, as well as how long it would take to pay off the replacement server. We found that a consolidation ratio of 13 to 1 could yield $531,725 in software savings, many times the cost of the replacement hardware itself. So not only will the business benefit from the massively-scalable current-generation Dell server technology paired with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 running SQL Server 2014, but you can save money in the process.
Managing clients with Dell Client Integration Pack 3.0 and Microsoft System C...Principled Technologies
Client management is an important part of any enterprise. Employees have workstations in their offices or notebooks that travel with them around the globe, and efficient updates and remote management capabilities keep an organization’s IT assets ordered and secure. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 can provide a robust, efficient, management system for your IT infrastructure. Selecting clients that not only operate within your IT framework, but that have built-in software to integrate with it seamlessly to make client management tasks even easier is an intelligent strategy for your IT department.
In our tests, we found that Dell client management tools (Dell Client Integration Pack, Dell Client Configuration Toolkit, and Dell OpenManage Client Instrumentation) integrated in a typical SCCM 2012 environment reduced the steps it took to complete client management tasks by as much as 77 percent, and included a number of features that weren’t available with clients from HP and Lenovo.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Scalable performance and simplicity in s...Principled Technologies
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations provide a range of virtualized infrastructure solutions to meet your business’s needs today and in the future. Easy to deploy, manage, and upgrade, these robust solutions can grow as your business does, all the while reducing the likelihood of extended downtime due to their highly available architecture.
Resource balancing comparison: VMware vSphere 6 vs. Red Hat Enterprise Virtua...Principled Technologies
Having ample resources to handle user requests is a necessity of modern virtualization solutions. Allocating and distributing those resources evenly, however, is imperative to the success of your business’s virtualized environment. In our tests, after powering on the other two servers in our three-node cluster and adding resource management features, VMware vSphere 6 improved performance by 183 percent over its baseline configuration of one active server and no resource management features. RHEV 3.5, in contrast, delivered only a 79 percent increase over its baseline. As you design your business’s infrastructure and applications, improvements such as those offered by VMware vSphere 6 DRS and Storage DRS can play a critical role by offering your users better application experiences. Optimized and modern resource management provided by VMware DRS can also help to lower your IT purchase and maintenance costs by reducing the number of servers necessary to run your applications.
Database performance and memory capacity with the Intel Xeon processor E5-266...Principled Technologies
The Dell PowerEdge M620 offers 24 memory slots, 50 percent more than the 16 slots offered by the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8, which enables the Dell solution to provide greater performance while delivering memory error protection. We found that the Dell PowerEdge M620 solution, built on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600v2 Series, delivered 182.2 percent more database performance and 92.0 percent faster response times than the previous version Intel Xeon E5-2640 processor-based HP ProLiant BL460c Gen 8 solution, while providing 12.5 percent more available memory and error protection. The additional memory capacity of the Dell solution allowed us to engage FRM technologies and still have more overall RAM capacity compared to the 16-slot HP server. The Dell PowerEdge M620 offered maximum memory capacity and protection with Fault Resilient Memory to keep your database workloads running strong and available for your business needs.
Administrators can spend a great deal of time deploying and managing computing resources, especially when dealing with ROBO environments. The Dell PowerEdge VRTX, powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 v2 product family and running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, gives administrators centralized management tools to help them provide time saving benefits and integrated toolsets.
In our hands-on testing, we found that the Dell PowerEdge VRTX greatly simplified deployment through an easy, wizard-based setup of Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clusters across server nodes with the Dell OpenManage Cluster Configurator. It also provided versatile hardware resource reassignment through a shared PCIe bus and efficient centralized management through CMC and scripting. Finally, we found that the Dell System Update Utility worked seamlessly with Microsoft Cluster-Aware Updating to update server nodes while keeping the failover cluster online and minimizing downtime. These advantages make the Dell PowerEdge VRTX an attractive choice for those who seek to reduce the management overhead of their ROBO environments.
Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 vs. VMware View 5: User experience and bandwidth consum...Principled Technologies
The document compares the user experience and bandwidth consumption of Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 and VMware View 5 for delivering virtual desktops to remote offices over bandwidth-constrained WAN connections. Testing in simulated small and medium-sized branch office environments found that with default configurations, Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 provided a better user experience than VMware View 5 while using less bandwidth, with savings of up to 16.3% in the small office scenario and up to 37.1% in the medium office scenario. Enabling features like Citrix Branch Repeater provided even further improvements to user experience and bandwidth efficiency.
Database performance: Dell PowerEdge R730xd vs. Lenovo ThinkServer RD650Principled Technologies
The document compares the database performance of the Dell PowerEdge R730xd server to the Lenovo ThinkServer RD650 server. It finds that the Dell PowerEdge R730xd delivered 27.9% more orders per minute for a Microsoft SQL Server 2014 database application than the Lenovo server. It also had lower application response times, up to 24.6% better, and lower disk response times, up to 93.1% better. The Dell server was able to process more orders per minute with faster response times for end users due to its current-generation hardware, increased solid-state drives, and storage capacity three times that of the Lenovo server.
Nimboxx HCI AU-110x: A scalable, easy-to-use solution for hyperconverged infr...Principled Technologies
Hyperconvergence is a fresh way of looking at your data center. For small- and medium-sized businesses especially, it could be well worth your time to invest in a hyperconverged infrastructure. The MeshOS-operated Nimboxx HCI AU-110x offered scalability and great performance in our hands-on tests and was simple and straightforward to use, which could help your business meet user demands and potentially save money by avoiding things such as hiring expensive IT staff to maintain your data center.
VMmark virtualization performance of Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SANPrincipled Technologies
The storage you use for your virtualization solution can be a significant factor in its performance and effectiveness. Two Dell PowerEdge R720 servers, paired with Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN, ran 10 VMmark tiles for a total of 80 running VMs and achieved a score of 12.05@10 tiles, making it the top score running VMware ESXi 5.5 of the 32-core server configurations. For enterprises that need excellent virtualization performance, this makes Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN a wise investment.
Minimizing licensing costs for enterprise applications is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down. When your applications use per-core licensing, choosing higher-performance servers with fewer cores dramatically reduces your software-related spending. The Dell PowerEdge M820 blade solution with Compellent storage could deliver up to $96,236 in savings as compared to a single HP ProLiant BL680c G7 solution, and if consolidating multiple workloads, could deliver even more savings in licensing costs when running Microsoft SQL Server in a virtualized scenario – all while maintaining or exceeding previous performance levels.
The switching method you choose for your SBC environment can help determine performance and the experience that end-users have. We found that unifying switching with Cisco VM-FEX resulted in up to 29 percent lower latency than a solution using a traditional vSwitch when running a Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop farm. Furthermore, the Cisco VM-FEX solution used up to 53 percent less CPU than the vSwitch solution did under extreme network conditions. In addition to these performance advantages, Cisco UCS Manager provides a central point of management and a simplified method to add vSphere hosts to the VM-FEX-enabled vSwitch, which can reduce management time and costs.
As our results show, switching to Cisco VM-FEX can provide your users with a more responsive environment.
Upgrading key components in servers can significantly improve performance and capacity. The report tested upgrading components in Dell PowerEdge servers. It found that upgrading to newer Dell PowerEdge R720 servers with Intel Xeon and SSD components, Windows Server 2012, and 10GbE networking supported 4.5 times as many VMs as the older Dell PowerEdge R710 servers. Each individual component upgrade, such as the processor, storage, or network card, increased performance. But upgrading all components together maximized the number of supported VMs, database transactions, and email users.
The document discusses new investments in SQL Server that will deliver mission critical confidence, breakthrough insights, and cloud capabilities. Key points include enhanced availability through SQL Server AlwaysOn; improved data warehouse performance from ColumnStore Indexes; and support for hybrid cloud solutions through common tools that allow customers to take advantage of Windows Azure.
Dell Acceleration Appliance for Databases 2.0 and Microsoft SQL Server 2014: ...Principled Technologies
As this guide has shown, installing and configuring a Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with SQL Server 2014 powered by the Dell Acceleration Appliance for Databases is a straightforward procedure. A key benefit from implementing DAAD 2.0 into your infrastructure is the ability to accelerate workloads without a complete storage area network redesign. This can be ideal for businesses that have snapshot and deduplication features within their software stack or are looking to improve database performance without investing in large storage solutions that may contain features they do not need. Consider DAAD 2.0 for your business—a storage acceleration solution that requires only 4U of rack space and can potentially give your database workloads a boost.
Component upgrades from Intel and Dell can increase VM density and boost perf...Principled Technologies
The document summarizes an experiment conducted by Principled Technologies that tested the performance improvements from upgrading server components. They found that upgrading from a Dell PowerEdge R720 to a Dell PowerEdge R730 server, along with upgrading the processor, operating system, storage drives and network cards, increased the number of supported VMs by 67% and database performance by 60%. Upgrading all components maximized performance benefits.
Dell PowerEdge M520 server solution: Energy efficiency and database performancePrincipled Technologies
As energy prices continue to rise, building a power-efficient data center that does not sacrifice performance is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down while keeping application performance high. Choosing servers that pair high performance with new power-efficient technologies helps you do so. In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge M520 with Dell EqualLogic PS-M4110 arrays outperformed the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 server with HP StorageWorks D2200sb arrays by 113.5 percent in OPM. Not only did the Dell PowerEdge M520 blade server solution deliver higher overall performance, it also did so more efficiently, delivering 79.9 percent better database performance/watt than the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 solution.
Managing Windows Server Systems For Midsize OrganizationsMicrosoft TechNet
This document provides an overview and agenda for a presentation on managing Windows Server systems for midsize organizations using Windows Essential Business Server and System Center Essentials 2007. The presentation covers introducing midsize business solutions, configuring Windows Essential Business Server, automating software distribution and updates, and enabling proactive management. It also includes demonstrations of setting up Windows Essential Business Server, completing its configuration, automating software updates and deployment, and using System Center Essentials 2007 for monitoring and management.
VMware vSphere 7 Update 2 offered greater VM density and increased availabili...Principled Technologies
vSphere not only supported more VMs than the container native virtualization approach in OpenShift, but it required less downtime and less hands-on admin time
Dell PowerEdge M420: A Microsoft SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Re...Principled Technologies
By utilizing the Dell PowerEdge M420 blade server with SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances, you can create a self-contained, highly available database solution while using minimal rack space. The ability to cluster SQL Server instances for high availability and redundancy in such a small and dense form factor with the Dell PowerEdge M420 is a powerful combination for your enterprise database needs.
Comparing performance and cost: Dell PowerEdge VRTX with one Dell PowerEdge M...Principled Technologies
Keeping a legacy disparate hardware solution composed of nine older servers instead of choosing the new Dell PowerEdge VRTX powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3 family may cost more than one would expect. We found that the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with an Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3-powered Dell PowerEdge M830 server could do the work of nine legacy servers running email, database, and file/print server workloads. The VRTX ran all nine workloads in VMs, achieving a slight performance boost on the database and file/print workloads while using much less datacenter space and reducing power consumption by 38.4 percent.
The VRTX achieved these savings using 88.6 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.
Despite a larger initial investment, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with an Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3-powered Dell PowerEdge M830 server could actually lower the total cost of ownership over five years by as much as 48.5 percent, delivering a solid return on investment in less than two years.
As our test results show, investing in the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-4600 v3 family could provide a compact solution to optimize application performance and reduce complexity at a lower lifetime cost than a legacy solution composed of nine older servers.
Populating your data center with new, more powerful and energy efficient servers can deliver numerous benefits to your organization. By consolidating multiple older servers onto a new platform, you can save in the areas of data center space and port costs, management costs, and power and cooling costs.
In our tests, we found that the Lenovo ThinkServer RD630 could consolidate the workloads of three HP ProLiant DL385 G5 servers, while increasing overall performance by 82.6 percent and reducing power consumption by 58.8 percent, making the ThinkServer RD630 an excellent choice to reduce the costs associated with running your data center.
Dell PowerEdge R920 running Oracle Database: Benefits of upgrading with NVMe ...Principled Technologies
Strong server performance is essential to companies running Oracle Database. The new Dell PowerEdge R920 provides strong performance in its base configuration with 24 SAS hard disks, but this performance gets an enormous boost when running the configuration containing NVMe Express Flash PCIe SSDs. In our testing, the upgraded configuration of the Dell PowerEdge R920 delivered 14.9 times the database performance of the base configuration. In addition, in testing the raw I/O throughput of the NVMe Express Flash PCIe SSDs, we saw as much as 192.8 times the IOPS as compared to the base configuration. Given that the storage subsystem is critical in servers and specifically database applications, the performance improvements offered by NVMe Express Flash PCIe SSDs can lead to great service improvements for your customers, making this upgrade a very wise investment.
Veerendra Patil has over 10 years of experience designing, implementing, and administering high availability NetBackup master and media servers, as well as Enterprise Storage Area Networks and Network Attached Storage. He has experience migrating over 50 NetBackup catalogs across various platforms and complex cluster migrations. Additionally, he has expertise installing and configuring Veritas NetBackup, CommVault, VMware, Windows servers, Linux distributions, and various storage solutions like NetApp, EMC, and HP.
The document discusses Microsoft's roadmap for Windows Server releases, including plans for Windows Server 2008 R2. It notes that R2 releases enable refinement of features and adaptation to changing technologies between major releases. Windows Server 2008 R2 will focus on virtualization, management improvements, integration with Windows 7, scalability, reliability, and web functionality. The release is intended to build on Windows Server 2008 and deliver targeted innovations on a predictable two-year cycle.
Consolidate and upgrade: Dell PowerEdge VRTX and Microsoft SQL Server 2014Principled Technologies
Your growing business shouldn’t run on aging hardware and software until it fails. Adding memory and upgrading processors will not provide the same benefits to your infrastructure as a consolidation and upgrade can. Upgrading and consolidating your IT infrastructure to the Dell PowerEdge VRTX running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014 can improve performance while adding features such as high availability.
Based on our findings, a single Dell PowerEdge VRTX can replace four four-year-old dual-socket servers with VMs running heavy SQL database workloads. We found that consolidating four older servers onto a Dell PowerEdge VRTX and upgrading to Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save up to $16,390 over three years, compared to keeping the four-year-old dual-socket servers and upgrading existing storage infrastructure. If your business runs older versions of Microsoft SQL Server on end-of-life dual-socket servers, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save your company these costs while delivering better performance than the aging hardware and software.
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - Ten Reasons to Choose Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R...Microsoft Private Cloud
SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise provides a comprehensive data platform with built-in security, availability, and scalability. It allows for server consolidation to reduce hardware costs, supports virtualization for further cost savings, and ensures high availability and disaster recovery. In addition, it improves performance and scalability for business applications and data warehousing, and enables self-service business intelligence for greater efficiencies.
VMmark 2.5.2 virtualization performance of the Dell Storage SC4020 arrayPrincipled Technologies
The Dell Storage SC4020 array paired with Dell PowerEdge R620 servers supported 30 tiles of the VMmark 2.5.2 virtualization benchmark for a total of 240 running virtual machines. The system achieved a score of 31.35 at 30 tiles, indicating it can handle multiple virtualized applications and hypervisor operations while maintaining strong performance. Testing showed the SC4020 provided consistent I/O operations per second around 43,000 and latency mostly under 4 milliseconds. This performance demonstrates the SC4020 is suitable for increasing virtualized workloads supported by solid-state drives without degrading storage performance.
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.
A company’s success depends on critical application performance and availability. Upgrades and patches can improve application efficiency and user experience, but making the necessary changes requires resource intensive environments to test updates before deploying them. What’s more, these applications need to continue accessing data even in the event of an on-premises crisis.
Our Dell EMC VMAX 250F and PowerEdge server solution supported test/dev environments and production database applications simultaneously without affecting the production applications’ performance. Storage latency for the VMAX 250F peaked at a millisecond in our testing while IOPS stayed within an acceptable range. The solution also kept data highly available with no downtime or performance drop when we initiated a lost host connection for the primary storage. Consider the Dell EMC VMAX 250F array for your datacenter to support the critical database applications that drive your company.
Nimboxx HCI AU-110x: A scalable, easy-to-use solution for hyperconverged infr...Principled Technologies
Hyperconvergence is a fresh way of looking at your data center. For small- and medium-sized businesses especially, it could be well worth your time to invest in a hyperconverged infrastructure. The MeshOS-operated Nimboxx HCI AU-110x offered scalability and great performance in our hands-on tests and was simple and straightforward to use, which could help your business meet user demands and potentially save money by avoiding things such as hiring expensive IT staff to maintain your data center.
VMmark virtualization performance of Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SANPrincipled Technologies
The storage you use for your virtualization solution can be a significant factor in its performance and effectiveness. Two Dell PowerEdge R720 servers, paired with Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN, ran 10 VMmark tiles for a total of 80 running VMs and achieved a score of 12.05@10 tiles, making it the top score running VMware ESXi 5.5 of the 32-core server configurations. For enterprises that need excellent virtualization performance, this makes Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN a wise investment.
Minimizing licensing costs for enterprise applications is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down. When your applications use per-core licensing, choosing higher-performance servers with fewer cores dramatically reduces your software-related spending. The Dell PowerEdge M820 blade solution with Compellent storage could deliver up to $96,236 in savings as compared to a single HP ProLiant BL680c G7 solution, and if consolidating multiple workloads, could deliver even more savings in licensing costs when running Microsoft SQL Server in a virtualized scenario – all while maintaining or exceeding previous performance levels.
The switching method you choose for your SBC environment can help determine performance and the experience that end-users have. We found that unifying switching with Cisco VM-FEX resulted in up to 29 percent lower latency than a solution using a traditional vSwitch when running a Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop farm. Furthermore, the Cisco VM-FEX solution used up to 53 percent less CPU than the vSwitch solution did under extreme network conditions. In addition to these performance advantages, Cisco UCS Manager provides a central point of management and a simplified method to add vSphere hosts to the VM-FEX-enabled vSwitch, which can reduce management time and costs.
As our results show, switching to Cisco VM-FEX can provide your users with a more responsive environment.
Upgrading key components in servers can significantly improve performance and capacity. The report tested upgrading components in Dell PowerEdge servers. It found that upgrading to newer Dell PowerEdge R720 servers with Intel Xeon and SSD components, Windows Server 2012, and 10GbE networking supported 4.5 times as many VMs as the older Dell PowerEdge R710 servers. Each individual component upgrade, such as the processor, storage, or network card, increased performance. But upgrading all components together maximized the number of supported VMs, database transactions, and email users.
The document discusses new investments in SQL Server that will deliver mission critical confidence, breakthrough insights, and cloud capabilities. Key points include enhanced availability through SQL Server AlwaysOn; improved data warehouse performance from ColumnStore Indexes; and support for hybrid cloud solutions through common tools that allow customers to take advantage of Windows Azure.
Dell Acceleration Appliance for Databases 2.0 and Microsoft SQL Server 2014: ...Principled Technologies
As this guide has shown, installing and configuring a Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with SQL Server 2014 powered by the Dell Acceleration Appliance for Databases is a straightforward procedure. A key benefit from implementing DAAD 2.0 into your infrastructure is the ability to accelerate workloads without a complete storage area network redesign. This can be ideal for businesses that have snapshot and deduplication features within their software stack or are looking to improve database performance without investing in large storage solutions that may contain features they do not need. Consider DAAD 2.0 for your business—a storage acceleration solution that requires only 4U of rack space and can potentially give your database workloads a boost.
Component upgrades from Intel and Dell can increase VM density and boost perf...Principled Technologies
The document summarizes an experiment conducted by Principled Technologies that tested the performance improvements from upgrading server components. They found that upgrading from a Dell PowerEdge R720 to a Dell PowerEdge R730 server, along with upgrading the processor, operating system, storage drives and network cards, increased the number of supported VMs by 67% and database performance by 60%. Upgrading all components maximized performance benefits.
Dell PowerEdge M520 server solution: Energy efficiency and database performancePrincipled Technologies
As energy prices continue to rise, building a power-efficient data center that does not sacrifice performance is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down while keeping application performance high. Choosing servers that pair high performance with new power-efficient technologies helps you do so. In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge M520 with Dell EqualLogic PS-M4110 arrays outperformed the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 server with HP StorageWorks D2200sb arrays by 113.5 percent in OPM. Not only did the Dell PowerEdge M520 blade server solution deliver higher overall performance, it also did so more efficiently, delivering 79.9 percent better database performance/watt than the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 solution.
Managing Windows Server Systems For Midsize OrganizationsMicrosoft TechNet
This document provides an overview and agenda for a presentation on managing Windows Server systems for midsize organizations using Windows Essential Business Server and System Center Essentials 2007. The presentation covers introducing midsize business solutions, configuring Windows Essential Business Server, automating software distribution and updates, and enabling proactive management. It also includes demonstrations of setting up Windows Essential Business Server, completing its configuration, automating software updates and deployment, and using System Center Essentials 2007 for monitoring and management.
VMware vSphere 7 Update 2 offered greater VM density and increased availabili...Principled Technologies
vSphere not only supported more VMs than the container native virtualization approach in OpenShift, but it required less downtime and less hands-on admin time
Dell PowerEdge M420: A Microsoft SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Re...Principled Technologies
By utilizing the Dell PowerEdge M420 blade server with SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances, you can create a self-contained, highly available database solution while using minimal rack space. The ability to cluster SQL Server instances for high availability and redundancy in such a small and dense form factor with the Dell PowerEdge M420 is a powerful combination for your enterprise database needs.
Comparing performance and cost: Dell PowerEdge VRTX with one Dell PowerEdge M...Principled Technologies
Keeping a legacy disparate hardware solution composed of nine older servers instead of choosing the new Dell PowerEdge VRTX powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3 family may cost more than one would expect. We found that the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with an Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3-powered Dell PowerEdge M830 server could do the work of nine legacy servers running email, database, and file/print server workloads. The VRTX ran all nine workloads in VMs, achieving a slight performance boost on the database and file/print workloads while using much less datacenter space and reducing power consumption by 38.4 percent.
The VRTX achieved these savings using 88.6 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.
Despite a larger initial investment, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with an Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3-powered Dell PowerEdge M830 server could actually lower the total cost of ownership over five years by as much as 48.5 percent, delivering a solid return on investment in less than two years.
As our test results show, investing in the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-4600 v3 family could provide a compact solution to optimize application performance and reduce complexity at a lower lifetime cost than a legacy solution composed of nine older servers.
Populating your data center with new, more powerful and energy efficient servers can deliver numerous benefits to your organization. By consolidating multiple older servers onto a new platform, you can save in the areas of data center space and port costs, management costs, and power and cooling costs.
In our tests, we found that the Lenovo ThinkServer RD630 could consolidate the workloads of three HP ProLiant DL385 G5 servers, while increasing overall performance by 82.6 percent and reducing power consumption by 58.8 percent, making the ThinkServer RD630 an excellent choice to reduce the costs associated with running your data center.
Dell PowerEdge R920 running Oracle Database: Benefits of upgrading with NVMe ...Principled Technologies
Strong server performance is essential to companies running Oracle Database. The new Dell PowerEdge R920 provides strong performance in its base configuration with 24 SAS hard disks, but this performance gets an enormous boost when running the configuration containing NVMe Express Flash PCIe SSDs. In our testing, the upgraded configuration of the Dell PowerEdge R920 delivered 14.9 times the database performance of the base configuration. In addition, in testing the raw I/O throughput of the NVMe Express Flash PCIe SSDs, we saw as much as 192.8 times the IOPS as compared to the base configuration. Given that the storage subsystem is critical in servers and specifically database applications, the performance improvements offered by NVMe Express Flash PCIe SSDs can lead to great service improvements for your customers, making this upgrade a very wise investment.
Veerendra Patil has over 10 years of experience designing, implementing, and administering high availability NetBackup master and media servers, as well as Enterprise Storage Area Networks and Network Attached Storage. He has experience migrating over 50 NetBackup catalogs across various platforms and complex cluster migrations. Additionally, he has expertise installing and configuring Veritas NetBackup, CommVault, VMware, Windows servers, Linux distributions, and various storage solutions like NetApp, EMC, and HP.
The document discusses Microsoft's roadmap for Windows Server releases, including plans for Windows Server 2008 R2. It notes that R2 releases enable refinement of features and adaptation to changing technologies between major releases. Windows Server 2008 R2 will focus on virtualization, management improvements, integration with Windows 7, scalability, reliability, and web functionality. The release is intended to build on Windows Server 2008 and deliver targeted innovations on a predictable two-year cycle.
Consolidate and upgrade: Dell PowerEdge VRTX and Microsoft SQL Server 2014Principled Technologies
Your growing business shouldn’t run on aging hardware and software until it fails. Adding memory and upgrading processors will not provide the same benefits to your infrastructure as a consolidation and upgrade can. Upgrading and consolidating your IT infrastructure to the Dell PowerEdge VRTX running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014 can improve performance while adding features such as high availability.
Based on our findings, a single Dell PowerEdge VRTX can replace four four-year-old dual-socket servers with VMs running heavy SQL database workloads. We found that consolidating four older servers onto a Dell PowerEdge VRTX and upgrading to Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save up to $16,390 over three years, compared to keeping the four-year-old dual-socket servers and upgrading existing storage infrastructure. If your business runs older versions of Microsoft SQL Server on end-of-life dual-socket servers, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save your company these costs while delivering better performance than the aging hardware and software.
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - Ten Reasons to Choose Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R...Microsoft Private Cloud
SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise provides a comprehensive data platform with built-in security, availability, and scalability. It allows for server consolidation to reduce hardware costs, supports virtualization for further cost savings, and ensures high availability and disaster recovery. In addition, it improves performance and scalability for business applications and data warehousing, and enables self-service business intelligence for greater efficiencies.
VMmark 2.5.2 virtualization performance of the Dell Storage SC4020 arrayPrincipled Technologies
The Dell Storage SC4020 array paired with Dell PowerEdge R620 servers supported 30 tiles of the VMmark 2.5.2 virtualization benchmark for a total of 240 running virtual machines. The system achieved a score of 31.35 at 30 tiles, indicating it can handle multiple virtualized applications and hypervisor operations while maintaining strong performance. Testing showed the SC4020 provided consistent I/O operations per second around 43,000 and latency mostly under 4 milliseconds. This performance demonstrates the SC4020 is suitable for increasing virtualized workloads supported by solid-state drives without degrading storage performance.
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.
A company’s success depends on critical application performance and availability. Upgrades and patches can improve application efficiency and user experience, but making the necessary changes requires resource intensive environments to test updates before deploying them. What’s more, these applications need to continue accessing data even in the event of an on-premises crisis.
Our Dell EMC VMAX 250F and PowerEdge server solution supported test/dev environments and production database applications simultaneously without affecting the production applications’ performance. Storage latency for the VMAX 250F peaked at a millisecond in our testing while IOPS stayed within an acceptable range. The solution also kept data highly available with no downtime or performance drop when we initiated a lost host connection for the primary storage. Consider the Dell EMC VMAX 250F array for your datacenter to support the critical database applications that drive your company.
A Dell PowerEdge MX environment using OpenManage Enterprise and OpenManage En...Principled Technologies
Compared to a Cisco UCS-X environment using Intersight, the Dell environment streamlined making changes to VLANs and helped avoid interventions during scheduled firmware updates
Conclusion
We executed two management scenarios in a Dell PowerEdge MX environment with Dell OpenManage Enterprise and OpenManage Enterprise Modular and a Cisco UCS X-Series chassis environment with Cisco Intersight. We learned that the Dell solution’s single-part profile modification for performing VLAN updates was quicker and simpler than the Cisco solution’s two-part profile deployment, requiring 40 percent less time and two-thirds as many steps. We also compared the firmware updating process on the solutions. Being able to schedule these updates to occur automatically from the online Dell repository offered an advantage over having to manually execute the same tasks from the Cisco Intersight repositories. Namely, administrators do not need to take action during maintenance windows but can instead schedule them ahead of time. Saving time on routine tasks frees administrators to pursue innovation, and being able to avoid middle-of-the-night duties helps companies provide a better work experience for admins. Together, these advantages help make Dell PowerEdge MX servers a good candidate for companies considering upgrading the older Cisco UCS servers in their data centers.
VMmark 2.5.2 virtualization performance of the Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS stora...Principled Technologies
Virtualization is a critical part of data center computing. For your virtualization solution to succeed, it is essential that you have a storage platform capable of delivering the performance and capacity needed for a virtualized environment in a cost effective way. The Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS array, paired with a cluster of Dell PowerEdge M620 servers, ran 12 VMmark tiles for a total of 96 running VMs, and achieved a score of 14.80@12. This performance, along with its value and ease of management, make the Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS array an excellent investment.
The new Dell PowerEdge R720 comes with more than just the power to handle your heavy mixed workloads – it offers many storage solutions to deliver the level of performance you need. In our tests, we found that that a configuration of all HDDs could support a total of 1,164 users accessing database, mail, and collaboration applications. The Dell PowerEdge R720 solution with CacheCade enabled increased the supported number of users to 2,929, an increase of 151.6 percent. Finally, the Hybrid solution increased the number of users to 7,574, or an increase of 550.7 percent over the HDD solution, providing you with numerous options and scalability to get the performance you need.
Compact, high-performing servers and streamlined software are a necessity for any data center that provides multi-tier hosted Web solutions, cloud services, or other scale-out implementations. Customers need quick access to Web applications that power their business, and the databases that power those Web applications. In our tests, we found that the Dell PowerEdge C6220 server with an open-source LAMP software stack was able to complete up to 38,793 orders per minute for one Web site, 79,759 orders per minute for two Web sites, and 119,758 orders per minute for four Web sites – all while providing the flexibility, efficiency, and maintenance features that large-scale deployments require.
Implementing and managing large and distributed enterprise solutions presents unique administrative challenges. Anything that can streamline the process to minimize error and save administrator time and effort can have a strong, positive effect on your company’s bottom line. We found that the Dell Chassis Management Controller made deploying Dell PowerEdge M620 blades in a Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis much quicker and easier by allowing you to import existing server profiles in just a few clicks. In our test case to configure for a common mission critical application, Citrix XenDesktop, manually deploying a full 16-blade chassis required 800 steps; but only 59 steps with Dell Chassis Management Controller, transforming a multi-hour task to one that took just minutes. Certain demanding applications can require even greater hardware configuration — these would benefit even more from the “all settings” profile capture and replication features of the Dell Chassis Management Controller.
The ability to pre-provision empty slots and export profiles for redeployment on other chassis further increases the value of the Dell Chassis Management Controller in bigger environments by largely eliminating tedious, redundant tasks and decreasing the opportunities for human error, while freeing administrators to perform other mission-critical or innovative activities. Choosing a solution that automates much of the deployment process is an asset to managing your infrastructure and your business.
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.
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.
Dell Active System 800 converged infrastructure solution: VDI and collaborati...Principled Technologies
When searching for a converged infrastructure solution to deploy to your data center, choosing a complete solution that can run a variety of simultaneous workloads is a must for your organization. An easy-to-deploy, predictable, highly scalable solution that has the ability to meet your workload requirements and provides administrators with flexibility is vital to running an efficient data center.
In our tests, the Dell Active System 800 provided ample performance to drive the needs of a 1,800-person organization using multiple collaboration applications, order-processing applications, and virtual desktop infrastructure. Adding more server and storage capacity to the system allows for reliable and predictable scalability that can be tailored to your organization’s specific needs. Expand your infrastructure only as much as you need; the Dell Active System 800 is able to perform well for all end-users while providing flexibility for administrators.
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.
Elevate your e-commerce business by upgrading to the Dell EMC PowerEdge R740x...Principled Technologies
Upgrading from legacy Dell PowerEdge R720 servers with a SAN storage array to a VMware vSAN cluster of Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd servers with 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors provided a dramatic performance boost. The new cluster handled 11.4 times as many orders per minute as the legacy environment and 1.3 times as many orders per minute as a previous generation solution with 1st Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors. The document recommends upgrading hardware to improve efficiency, support new technologies, and help businesses grow by handling more customers.
Process 84% more MySQL database activity with the latest-gen Dell PowerEdge R...Principled Technologies
The 16th Generation server handled more database transactions than a previous-generation PowerEdge R750 server with vSphere 7
New servers and software versions can be a boon for your organization. If you’re running MySQL workloads for web applications, retail, or other use cases, your organization could see a performance boost by upgrading to latest-generation Dell PowerEdge R760 servers running VMware vSphere 8.0. In our testing, a PowerEdge R760 server handled 84.5 percent more NOPM than an older Dell PowerEdge R750 server. We also found that Live Optics infrastructure monitoring software allows you to view performance data for new PowerEdge R760 and vSphere 8.0 environments so you can manage those resources to optimize your MySQL workloads.
Slow performance and unavailable critical applications can impinge a company’s progress. You can apply patches and updates to improve application quality and user experience, but these changes need to be tested in resource-intensive environments before deployment. Keeping these applications accessing data is vital, too, as on-premises events can put availability at risk.
Our Dell EMC VMAX 250F and PowerEdge server solution supported test/dev environments and production database applications simultaneously without affecting the production applications’ performance. As we added VMs designed for test/dev environments, the production workload maintained an acceptable level of IOPS and achieved an average storage latency of less than a millisecond. The solution also kept data highly available with no downtime and no performance drop when we initiated a lost host connection for the primary storage. To run critical database applications of your company, consider the Dell EMC VMAX 250F for your datacenter.
The document summarizes testing of a Dell EMC VMAX 250F all-flash storage array and Dell EMC PowerEdge servers to support both production and test/development Oracle Database 12c workloads. Key findings include:
1) The solution maintained low latency of less than 1 millisecond even when adding 7 test/dev database snapshots to the production workload.
2) The production workload saw less than 2% degradation in IOPS despite increasing overall storage IOPS by adding test/dev workloads.
3) Using SRDF/Metro replication, the solution provided uninterrupted access to data with no downtime or performance drop when one array was unavailable, ensuring high availability.
Streamline operations with new and updated VMware vSphere 8.0 features on 16t...Principled Technologies
By using the latest software and Dell PowerEdge servers in your VMware vSphere environment, you can provide your data center administrators with new or updated tools that simplify routine tasks in both initial host setup and ongoing monitoring. In our exploration of the latest features in vSphere 8.0 Lifecycle Manager, we found that vSphere 8.0 on latest-gen Dell PowerEdge servers offers advantages compared to the previous generation, which may make an infrastructure update worth your while. By introducing vSphere Configuration Profiles and providing simpler image updates to vSphere clusters, VMware vSphere 8.0 on latest-generation Dell PowerEdge servers can help streamline operations for your administrative staff.
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.
VDI performance comparison: Dell PowerEdge FX2 and FC430 servers with VMware ...Principled Technologies
Replacing your legacy VDI servers with a new Intel Xeon processor E5-2650 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 legacy server and traditional SAN VSAN by offering 72 percent greater VDI users. Additionally, it achieved greater performance while using 91 percent less space and at a cost of only $176.52 per user.
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.
Similar to Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: High available and scalable performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions (20)
Help skilled workers succeed with Dell Latitude 7030 and 7230 Rugged Extreme ...Principled Technologies
Instead of equipping consumer-grade tablets with rugged cases
Conclusion
In our hands-on testing, the Dell Latitude 7030 and 7230 Rugged Extreme Tablets showed that they are better equipped to help skilled workers than consumer-grade Apple iPad Pro and Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 tablets in multiple ways. They provide more built-in capabilities and features than the consumer-grade tablets we tested. And, while they were more expensive than the rugged-case fortified consumer-grade options we tested, their rugged claims were more than skin deep.
In our performance and durability tests, the Dell Latitude 7030 and 7230 Rugged Extreme Tablets performed better in demanding manufacturing, logistics, and field service environments than consumer-grade tablets with rugged cases. Both Rugged Extreme Tablets, with their greater thermal range, suffered less performance degradation in extreme temperatures, never failed and were merely scuffed after 26 hard drops, survived a 10 minute drenching with no ill effects, and were easier to view in direct sunlight than Apple iPad Pro and Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 tablets.
Bring ideas to life with the HP Z2 G9 Tower Workstation - InfographicPrincipled Technologies
We compared CPU performance and noise output of an HP Z2 G9 Tower Workstation in High Performance Mode to a similarly configured Dell Precision 3660 Tower Workstation in its out-of-box performance mode
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.
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.
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.
Improving database performance and value with an easy migration to Azure Data...Principled Technologies
Migrating from Azure Database for MySQL – Single Server to a Flexible Server solution was quick and provided performance and cost benefits
Don’t put off migrating your databases from Azure Database for MySQL – Single Server until the last minute—which is September 2024, when the service will end. Our hands-on testing shows that moving to Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server is a simple process that can actually improve your overall database performance and offer better value. With as much as 117 percent better OLTP performance on sysbench and up to 266 percent better performance per dollar, migrating your database to Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server with AMD EPYC processors can help you serve more database users and potentially improve your operating budget compared to the expiring Single Server option.
Improving database performance and value with an easy migration to Azure Data...
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: High available and scalable performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
1. DELL 3-2-1 REFERENCE CONFIGURATIONS: HIGHLY AVAILABLE
AND SCALABLE PERFORMANCE WITH
DELL POWEREDGE R720-BASED SOLUTIONS
Businesses need an IT infrastructure that meets their performance needs—
today and in the future—that is easy to manage, is reliable, and offers simple, scalable
upgrade options. A range of new solutions available from Dell and Microsoft lets a
company achieve all of these goals.
In our labs, PT tested three Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations based on the
Dell PowerEdge™ R720 server, Dell EqualLogic™ PS6110XV storage arrays, and Dell
Force10™ S4810P switches. We measured how well each of these configurations
handled increasing levels of Microsoft® SQL Server®, Microsoft Exchange Server, and
Microsoft SharePoint® Server activity simulating 500, 1,000, or 1,500 users accessing
these applications simultaneously. We also tested the failover feature of these
configurations.
We found that the 3-2-1 base configuration supported 500 users per VM, the 4-
2-1 additional server configuration supported 1,000 users per VM, and the 4-2-2
additional server and storage configuration supported 1,500 users per VM—all with
resources to spare. This allows your business to select the configuration that suits your
specific needs or allows you an easy avenue for upgrading as your business grows. We
also found that when we tested the failover feature, we had less than a minute and a
half of downtime, making this a resilient and highly available solution that protects your
business from the losses that can accompany extended outages.
AUGUST 2012
A PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES TEST REPORT
Commissioned by Dell Inc.
2. PERFORMANCE THAT SCALES
We tested three Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations by simulating a specific
user count workload on four VMs: Two database application VMs, one email application
VM, and one collaboration application VM. Each configuration builds on the one that
precedes it to be able to handle a higher number of users.
3-2-1 base configuration. This configuration has two Dell PowerEdge
R720 application servers, one Dell PowerEdge R620 management
server, two 10G Force10 S4810P switches, and one Dell EqualLogic
PS6110XV storage array. In our testing, this configuration supported a
target of 500 users per VM.
4-2-1 additional server configuration. This configuration takes the base
configuration and adds a third Dell PowerEdge R720 server to boost
performance. In our testing, this configuration supported a target of
1,000 users per VM.
4-2-2 additional server and storage configuration. This configuration
takes the extra server configuration described above and adds a second
Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV array to achieve the greatest performance of
all. In our testing, this configuration supported a target of 1,500 users
per VM.
Figure 1 shows a summary of the users that each configuration supported on
each of the VMs.
Figure 1. Dell Reference
Configurations supported
anywhere from 500 users to
1,500 users per VM.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 2
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
3. We ran Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for the two database application VMs,
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP2 for the email application VM, and Microsoft
SharePoint Server 2010 SP1 for the collaboration application VM.
Setting up high-availability architecture can be difficult, but the 3-2-1 Reference
Configurations based on Dell PowerEdge R720 servers with Intel® Xeon® processors
make it easy. Additionally, Microsoft System Center 2012 Operations Manager (SCOM
2012) and System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM 2012) build on
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Failover Cluster Manager, and enhance your ability
to manage the entire solution—including your Dell PowerEdge servers, the failover
cluster, and your virtual machines—from a single location. With these management
tools, IT administrators can monitor health status, hardware, and performance
information for the entire configuration. To learn more about the setup process and the
function the management tools provide, see our companion configuration guide.1
As easy as 3-2-1
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations follow the 3-2-1 model, where the
configuration comprises three servers, two switches, and one storage array. As shown
by the two upgraded configurations, the 3-2-1 model can be scaled up to meet higher
computing and storage demands. For each configuration, we created a failover cluster
with four Hyper-V™ VMs on the Dell PowerEdge R720 servers and Dell EqualLogic
PS6110XV storage, and used them to run the three common businesses applications.
Creating a failover cluster between the Hyper-V hosts allows a VM to quickly move from
one host server to another when used in conjunction with shared storage. This
minimizes downtime in that a VM can quickly move from one host server to another if
that host server malfunctions or goes offline. Additionally, it allows for an IT
administrator to make planned moves from one server host to another without having
to take the VM offline.
We put the configurations to the test by simulating 500, 1,000, and 1,500 users
simultaneously accessing each of the two database VMs, using email, and using
SharePoint. Our finding? Not only could the servers run these heavy workloads, they did
so with plenty of resources to spare for future growth.
In addition to measuring the performance the Dell PowerEdge R720 servers
provide, we also abruptly removed power from one of the host servers to simulate what
would happen in the unlikely event of a complete server failure. After we did so, the
database and SharePoint VMs that were hosted on this server failed over seamlessly
and began running on the other Dell PowerEdge R720 with very little downtime; about a
1
http://www.principledtechnologies.com/clients/reports/Dell/R720_321_upgrade_configuration.pdf
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 3
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
4. minute and a half. Such seamless failover means your data is available when you need it
– even in the case of a server catastrophe.
Two clustering options for high availability
There are two options for high availability clusters: creating a cluster either at
the application level or at the host level. Clustering at the host level by using Hyper-V
failover clusters, which we did, works with any application, whether it supports
clustering or not, and enables more streamlined configuration, management, and future
growth of the cluster environment while maintaining a very low downtime in the event
of a failover. If the absolute smallest possible downtime is your primary goal, then
clustering at the application level may be a better option. In this configuration, you set
up each individual application for clustering on each server/VM. Some applications (for
instance SQL Server) support this sort of clustering. For more information, see our
companion configuration guide.
WHAT WE FOUND
We set up four VMs across our two Dell PowerEdge R720 host servers to house
the applications. In the case of the 4-2-2 and 4-2-1 configurations, the mail application
VM ran on its own host server, one of the database applications VM ran on a second
host server, and the other database and the collaboration application VMs ran on a
third server. In the case of the 3-2-1 configuration, the mail and collaboration
application VMs ran on different host servers, each of which also ran one of the two
database application VMs. Our goal was to run workloads simulating 500 users in the 3-
2-1 configuration, 1,000 users in the 4-2-1 configuration, and 1,500 users in the 4-2-2
configuration in each VM to verify each configuration could handle the desired user
load. Because we wanted to maintain high availability, we needed to ensure that each
server could handle the load without oversubscribing resources so that they could fail
over if necessary. Additionally, we ran the workload on the base 3-2-1 configuration
while simulating a failover event to demonstrate that a single host server would be able
to maintain the same level of performance running all four VMs.
Figure 2 shows the SQL Server performance for the three configurations. Each of
the two SQL Server VMs achieved the orders per minute (OPM) to demonstrate
supporting the respective user count. Assuming that each user is generating
approximately six OPM, 500 users would mean 3,000 OPM for the 3-2-1 configuration,
1,000 users would mean 6,000 OPM for the 4-2-1 configuration, and 1,500 users would
mean 9,000 OPM for the 4-2-2 configuration. As Figure 2 shows, in each configuration,
both VMs easily achieved the required OPM to support the set user count for each
configuration, obtaining 3,241 and 3,232 OPM for the 3-2-1 configuration, 6,878 and
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 4
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
5. 6,759 OPM for the 4-2-1 configuration, and 9,480 and 9,439 OPM for the 4-2-2
configuration.
SQL Server performance
(VM 1 and VM 2)
10,000
Orders per minute
8,000
6,000
4,000 VM 1
2,000 VM 2
0
3-2-1 4-2-1 4-2-2
configuration configuration configuration
(500 users) (1,000 users) (1,500 users)
Figure 2. SQL Server performance for the three configurations. Higher numbers are
better.
Figure 3 shows the Exchange Information Store read and write latency during
the LoadGen workload for the three configurations. In all cases, the Exchange Server VM
delivered latencies well within the acceptable parameters—a read latency less than 20
milliseconds and a write latency less than the read latency.
Exchange latency (VM 3)
14
12
10 Read
Milliseconds
8 latency
6
4
Write
2 latency
0
3-2-1 4-2-1 4-2-2
configuration configuration configuration
(500 users) (1,000 users) (1,500 users)
Figure 3. Exchange latency during the LoadGen workload for the three configurations.
Lower numbers are better.
Figure 4 shows the SharePoint Server performance for the three configurations.
We assumed that each user would generate approximately one task per minute and
determined acceptable performance to be within 95 percent of the theoretical
maximum. This means that 500 users would need to generate 475 tasks per minute for
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 5
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
6. the 3-2-1 configuration, 1,000 users would need to generate 950 tasks per minute for
the 4-2-1 configuration, and 1,500 users would need to generate 1,425 tasks per minute
for the 4-2-2 configuration. The SharePoint VM performed above the required tasks per
minute for each configuration. Additionally, the average latency in each case was well
below the 1-second threshold, at 0.24 seconds, 0.17 seconds, and 0.21 seconds for the
3-2-1, 4-2-1, and 4-2-2 configurations, respectively.
SharePoint Server performance (VM 4)
1,600
1,400
Tasks per minute
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
3-2-1 4-2-1 4-2-2
configuration configuration configuration
(500 users) (1,000 users) (1,500 users)
Figure 4. SharePoint performance in tasks per minute during the WSSDW workload for
the three configurations. Higher numbers are better.
Figure 5 shows the results for average CPU utilization and RAM utilization on
each of the Dell PowerEdge R720 host servers. Lower numbers are better. As our results
show, the servers were able to handle the load while maintaining resource usage
standards for high availability, and even had room for future growth.
Hyper-V Host 1
Hyper-V Host 2 Hyper-V Host 3
(hosting SQL 1 +
(hosting SQL 2 VM) (hosting Exchange VM)
Configuration SharePoint VMs)
% CPU % RAM % CPU % RAM % CPU % RAM
utilization utilization utilization utilization utilization utilization
3-2-1 configuration (500
7.21 21.82 10.05 24.97
users)
4-2-1 configuration (1,000
11.61 21.89 6.91 14.67 4.53 19.65
users)
4-2-2 configuration (1,500
15.07 21.48 8.93 14.38 17.12 19.48
users)
Figure 5. CPU and RAM utilization for the Dell PowerEdge R720 host servers. Lower numbers are better.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 6
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
7. Figure 6 shows the average I/O and latency data for the storage within each
configuration. In the 3-2-1 and 4-2-1 configurations, this is a single Dell EqualLogic
PS6110XV array and in the 4-2-2 configuration, this is two Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV
arrays.
3-2-1 4-2-1 4-2-2
configuration configuration configuration
(500 users) (1,000 users) (1,500 users)
Average reads IOPS 938.3 1,929.0 2,716.7
Average writes IOPS 748.4 1,512.8 1,863.6
Average total IOPS 1,686.7 3,441.8 4,580.3
Average read latency (ms) 6.2 8.3 6.4
Average write latency (ms) 1.2 1.4 1.2
Figure 6. Average I/O and latency data for the Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV arrays.
We determined acceptable storage performance as having a read latency under
20 milliseconds. As our results show, the latency is well below this level in all three
configurations while under test.
For more information on how we set up the tests to verify the performance
capabilities of our high-availability hardware setup, see the What we tested section.
When a failover event occurs and a server goes offline, the failover cluster
immediately detects the change and reboots any VMs that were running on that server
over to an active server in the cluster. Because the shared storage between the servers
holds the data for the VMs, this is generally a very quick process with minimal
downtime. To simulate a failover event, we used the 3-2-1 configuration and removed
power from one of the Hyper-V hosts, specifically, the server that was hosting the SQL
Server 2012 VM and the SharePoint VM while we were running the test workload. The
failover cluster quickly detected the failure of the host server and automatically
migrated the VMs to the other host server. We were able to re-establish connection and
continue the workload tests with only a slight interruption (1 minute 27 seconds).
Furthermore, we measured the resource utilization on the single host server running all
three VMs under workload stress and found that the average resource utilization was at
14.51 percent CPU and 38.26 percent RAM, with no observable change in performance.
WHAT WE TESTED
We created a failover cluster using Dell PowerEdge R720 servers with cluster-
shared volumes on the Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage array or arrays, using Dell
Force10 S4810P switches. We then used Hyper-V to create four virtualized servers in the
failover cluster to run the line-of-business applications: a collaboration server running
Microsoft SharePoint Server, a mail server running Microsoft Exchange Server, and two
database servers running Microsoft SQL Server. To demonstrate that each VM could
handle the required users, we ran benchmarks against each VM simulating 500, 1,000,
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 7
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
8. or 1,500 users accessing data on each. We staggered the benchmarks, allowing LoadGen
to start first and warm up for 15 minutes, then starting WSSDW and allowing it to warm
up for 5 minutes, then starting DVD Store and allowing for an additional 10 minutes of
run time before taking performance measurements. We measured the performance of
the four virtual machines over a 30-minute period of our test runs, and report the
median of three runs for each configuration. We based the median run on the median
storage latency for each configuration
For step-by-step instructions on how we tested, see Appendix B.
Database testing
We used the DVD Store Version 2 (DS2) benchmark to simulate 500, 1,000, or
1,500 database users. DS2 is an open-source application that models an online DVD
Store where customers log in, browse movies, and purchase movies. DS2 reports its
results in orders per minute that the server can handle.
We ran DS2 with a 100GB database and think times of 0.5, 0.18, and 0.12
seconds for the 3-2-1, 4-2-1, and 4-2-2 configurations respectively, so that each of our
32 threads represented 500, 1,000, or 1,500 users completing one order approximately
every 10 seconds against each of the two SQL Server 2012 VMs. The benchmark then
uses a default value of three searches on average before each order. We define a
minimum acceptable score as 3,000 OPM for the 3-2-1 configuration, 6,000 OPM for the
4-2-1 configuration, and 9,000 OPM for the 4-2-2 configuration. We allowed for a 10-
minute warm-up period, and then set the measurement period to 30 minutes.
For more details about the DS2 tool, see
http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/DVD+Store.
Mail testing
To test the configuration’s mail server performance, we used the Microsoft Load
Generator 2010 (LoadGen) benchmark, which performs tasks to simulate a standard
user generating mail activity. We simulated 500, 1,000, and 1,500 users for the 3-2-1, 4-
2-1, and 4-2-2 configurations and used the following settings:
Mailbox Profile: 250MB mailboxes
Action Profile: Outlook_500
Client Type: Outlook 2007 Cached
LoadGen simulates the mail activity for the designated user count. We set the
benchmark to run for 1 hour and 15 minutes: 15 minutes for LoadGen to warm-up, then
15 minutes for the remaining benchmarks to start and warm up, 30 minutes of
measured performance time, and 15 minutes as a cool-down period to complete the
run.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 8
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
9. For more details about LoadGen, see
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DDEC1642-F6E3-4D66-
A82F-8D3062C6FA98&displaylang=en.
Collaboration testing
To simulate the traffic of 500, 1,000, and 1,500 SharePoint Server 2010 users,
we used a customized version of the WSSDW 1.0.0.0 Beta test. This test creates sample
data, populates the server with it, and simulates SharePoint Server users completing
everyday tasks.
We used Visual Studio 2010 to execute the test workload, generating a realistic
user workload where each of the simulated users performed a task approximately every
minute. To do this, we set up the test to run 67, 134, or 200 users with an 8-second
think time between each of the various tasks to simulate 500, 1,000, or 1,500 users,
respectively. (Note that 67 and 134 will technically yield 502.5 and 1005 simulated
users, but in the case of our calculations, this difference is negligible.) We determine
acceptable performance if the latency in each case is under 1 second and the average
number of tasks per minute is within 95 percent of the theoretical maximum.
For more details about SharePoint Server, see http://office.microsoft.com/en-
us/sharepoint-server-help/.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations consisting of Dell PowerEdge R720 servers,
Dell Force10 S4810P switches, and Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage provide a range of
configuration options so that you can select the one that is right for your business
needs. Additionally, each configuration is easily scalable to accommodate for business
growth.
The 3-2-1 base configuration provides a robust solution for any business
needing to support up to 500 users on multiple business applications. Our tests
demonstrate this solution supporting 500 users per VM for four VMs including two
database VMs, one email VM, and one collaboration application VM.
If the number of users you need to support exceeds the user count the base
configuration provides, adding another Dell PowerEdge R720 server to make a 4-2-1
configuration can support up to 1,000 users on multiple business applications while
maintaining high availability. Our tests demonstrate this solution supporting 1,000 users
per VM in the same four VMs as the 3-2-1 solution. Additionally, these configurations
are so easy to scale upward that you can complete the process of adding a server in a
matter of two hours or less from start to finish.
If you require support for an even higher number of users, adding a server and
storage array to the base configuration, to make a 4-2-2 configuration allows for up to
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 9
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
10. 1,500 users on multiple business applications. Our tests demonstrated this when we ran
1,500 users against each of the four VMs. Better yet, adding a Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV
storage array to an existing 4-2-1 configuration is a cinch, taking under 30 minutes start
to finish.
All of these Dell Reference Configurations give your business the reliability of
highly available hardware configurations, greatly reducing downtime resulting from any
hardware malfunctions.
By choosing proven Dell architecture, you avoid the hassles of putting your
infrastructure together piece by piece, reducing the potential for error and providing
you with a sturdy solution that is easily scalable to fit your present and future needs.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 10
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
11. APPENDIX A – SERVER AND STORAGE CONFIGURATION INFORMATION
Figure 7 provides detailed configuration information for the servers in our configuration, and Figure 8 provides
configuration information for the Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage array.
Dell PowerEdge R620 (management
System Dell PowerEdge R720 (host servers)
server)
Power supplies
Total number 2 2
Vendor and model number Dell D750E-S1 Dell E750E-S0
Wattage of each (W) 750 750
Cooling fans
Total number 6 7
Vendor and model number AVC DBTC0638B2U Delta GFC0412DS
Dimensions (h x w) of each 2.5” x 2.5” 1.5” x 1.75”
Volts 12 12
Amps 1.20 1.82
General
Number of processor packages 2 2
Number of cores per processor 8 8
Number of hardware threads per core 2 2
System power management policy Balanced Balanced
CPU
Vendor Intel Intel
Name Xeon Xeon
Model number E5-2680 E5-2660
Stepping C1 C1
Socket type FCLGA2011 FCLGA2011
Core frequency (GHz) 2.70 2.20
Bus frequency 8 GT/s 8 GT/s
L1 cache 32 KB + 32 KB (per core) 32 KB + 32 KB (per core)
L2 cache 256 KB (per core) 256 KB (per core)
L3 cache 20 MB (shared) 20 MB (shared)
Platform
Vendor and model number Dell PowerEdge R720 Dell PowerEdge R620
Motherboard model number OM1GCR 07NDJ2X03
BIOS name and version Dell 1.1.2 Dell 0.3.37
BIOS settings Default Default
Memory module(s)
Total RAM in system (GB) 64 32
Vendor and model number Hynix HMT31GR7BFR4A-H9 Hynix HMT351R7BFR8C-PB
Type PC3L-10600R PC3-12800R
Speed (MHz) 1,333 1,600
Speed running in the system (MHz) 1,333 1,600
Timing/Latency (tCL-tRCD-tRP-
9-9-9-36 10-10-10-37
tRASmin)
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 11
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
12. Dell PowerEdge R620 (management
System Dell PowerEdge R720 (host servers)
server)
Size (GB) 8 4
Number of RAM module(s) 8 8
Chip organization Double-sided Double-sided
Rank Dual Dual
Operating system
Windows Server 2012 Release Windows Server 2012 Release
Name
Candidate Datacenter Edition Candidate Datacenter Edition
Build number 8400 8400
File system NTFS NTFS
Kernel ACPI x64-based PC ACPI x64-based PC
Language English English
Graphics
Vendor and model number Matrox® G200eR Matrox G200eR2
Driver Microsoft 6.2.8400.0 (6/21/2006) Microsoft 6.2.8400.0 (6/21/2006)
RAID controller
Vendor and model number Dell PERC H710P Mini PERC S110
Firmware version 21.0.2-0001 3.0.0-137
Driver version LSI Corporation 5.2.122.0 (4/3/2012) Dell Inc. 3.0.0.134 (10/14/2011)
Cache size (MB) 1024 1 GB
Hard drives
Vendor and model number Dell WD3000BKHG-18A29V0 Dell MZ-5S71000-0D3
Number of drives 2 2
Size (GB) 300 100
RPM 10,000 N/A
Type SAS SATA SSD
Network adapters
First network adapter
Vendor and model number Intel Ethernet 10G 4P X540/I350 rNDC Intel I350 Gigabit Controller
Type Integrated Integrated
Driver Intel 3.1.53.0 (6/11/2012) Microsoft 12.0.150.0 (2/29/2012)
Second network adapter
Vendor and model number Intel Ethernet Server Adapter X520-2
Type PCIe
Driver Intel 3.1.61.0 (7/5/2012)
Optical drive(s)
Vendor and model number TEAC DV-28SW TSSTcorp TS-U633J
Type DVD-ROM DVD-ROM
USB ports
Number 4 external, 1 internal 4 external, 1 internal
Type 2.0 2.0
Figure 7. System configuration information for the test servers.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 12
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
13. Storage array Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN
Array Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV
Number of active storage controllers 1
Number of active storage ports 1
Firmware revision V5.0.4
Disk vendor and model number Dell ST9300653SS
Disk size (GB) 300
Disk buffer size (MB) 64
Disk RPM 15,000
Disk type SAS
Switch number/type/model/ firmware revision 2 x Dell Force10 S4810P v8.3.10.3
Figure 8. Detailed configuration information for the storage array and switch.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 13
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
14. APPENDIX B – HOW WE TESTED
Test client configuration
For the test clients, we configured VMs on a server, each running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with the latest
available updates. We configured 10 VMs to distribute the LoadGen workload, two VMs for the DVD Store workload
(one per SQL Server instance), and one VM to run the WSSDW test workload.
Configuring the infrastructure server
We configured our infrastructure server, which would serve as our domain controller, as follows.
Installing Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate Datacenter
1. Insert the installation media into the CD/DVD drive.
2. When the Windows Setup window appears, click Next, and then Install Now.
3. Select Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate Datacenter (Server with a GUI), and click Next.
4. Check I accept the license terms, and click Next.
5. Click Custom: Install Windows only (advanced).
6. Select Drive 0 Unallocated Space, and click Next, at which point Windows will begin installing, and will restart
automatically after completing.
7. When the Settings page appears, fill in the Password and Reenter Password fields with the same password.
8. Log in with the previously set up password.
Configuring Windows Update
1. In the left pane of the Server Manager window, click Local Server.
2. In the main frame, next to Windows Update, click Never configured.
3. In the Windows Update window, in the main pane, click Let me choose my settings.
4. Under Important updates, select Never check for updates (not recommended), and then click OK.
5. In the left pane, click Check for updates, and install all available updates.
6. Close the Windows Update window.
Configuring Windows Firewall
1. In Server Manager, click ToolsWindows Firewall with Advanced Security.
2. In the Overview section, click Windows Firewall Properties.
3. In the Domain Profile tab, for Firewall state, click Off.
4. In the Private Profile tab, for Firewall state, click Off.
5. In the Public Profile tab, for Firewall state, click Off.
6. Then click OK.
7. Close the Windows Firewall Properties window.
Setting up Remote Desktop
1. In the Local Server tab of the Server Manager window, next to Remote Desktop, click Disabled.
2. In the System Properties window that appears, in the Remote Desktop section, select the Allow remote
connections to this computer radio button, and click OK when the warning message appears.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 14
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
15. 3. Uncheck Allow connections only from computers running Remote Desktop with Network Level Authentication
(recommended), and click OK.
Setting up IE Enhanced Security Configuration
1. In the Local Server tab of the Server Manager window, next to IE Enhanced Security Configuration, click On.
2. In the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration window, select the Off radio buttons for both
Administrators and Users, and click OK.
Installing the Active Directory Domain Services role
1. Launch Server Manager and select Add roles and features.
2. Click Next at the Add Roles and Features Wizard.
3. Select Role-based or feature-based installation, and click Next.
4. Select the AD server from the server pool, and click Next.
5. Select Active Directory Domain Services from the list of Roles, click the Add Services button to add features that
are required by Active Directory Domain Services, and click Next.
6. Accept the defaults selected by setup at the Features screen, and click Next.
7. Click Next at the AD DS screen.
8. Select Restart the destination server automatically if required at the confirmation screen, and click Install.
9. Click Promote this server to a domain controller.
10. Select Add a new forest, type in the Root domain name (fqdn), and click Next.
11. Type in and confirm the password, and click Next.
12. Click Next at the DNS Options screen.
13. Verify the NetBIOS name, and click Next.
14. Accept the default paths, and click Next.
15. Review the options, and click Next.
16. Verify the prerequisite check passes successfully, and click Install.
Configuring the network
For our high-availability setup, we configured the network cabling of the hardware as shown in Figure 3. Note
that we did not connect the stacking connections until we completed the switch configuration in the next section. We
used a Dell PowerConnect 5224switch for our infrastructure network, which we used to connect the 3-2-1
configurations to the infrastructure server (domain controller) and client machines.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 15
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
16. Figure 9. Networking cabling for our Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configuration.
We divided the 10Gb connections into three VLANs for the iSCSI network, Private/Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)
network, and Live Migration network. Figure 10 shows how we configured the network cables across the NICs for each
Dell PowerEdge R720.
NIC Port number Traffic type
1 Public/VM #1
Integrated on-board 1G NIC
2 Public/VM #2
1 iSCSI #1, Private/CSV #1, Live Migration #1
Intel X520-DA Dual Port 10G NIC
2 iSCSI #2, Private/CSV #2, Live Migration #2
Figure 10. NIC port configurations for each Dell PowerEdge R720.
Dell Force10 S4810P switch configuration
Before beginning, make sure both switches are running the latest and same version of firmware available. For
our testing, we used version 8.3.10.3. Connect to each switch with a serial cable and terminal utility, but do not connect
the switches with each other, and complete the steps below:
Setting up the stack configuration
1. Once connected through the terminal to the first switch, which will become the master, type enable and press
Enter.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 16
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
17. 2. Type delete startup-config and press Enter. When asked to confirm, type yes and press Enter.
3. Type reload and press Enter, and if asked to save the system configuration, type no and press Enter.
4. When asked to proceed with the reload, type yes and press Enter.
5. When the switch finishes rebooting, type enable and press Enter.
6. Type config and press Enter.
7. Type stack-unit 0 priority 2 and press Enter.
8. Type exit and press Enter.
9. Type stack-unit 0 stack-group 11 and press Enter.
10. Type copy run start and press Enter.
11. Connect to the second switch in the terminal.
12. Type enable and press Enter.
13. Type delete startup-config and press Enter. When asked to confirm, type yes and press Enter.
14. Type reload and press Enter, and if asked to save the system configuration, type no and press Enter.
15. When asked to proceed with the reload, type yes and press Enter.
16. When the switch finishes rebooting, type enable and press Enter.
17. Type stack-unit 0 renumber 1 and press Enter.
18. Type config and press Enter.
19. Type stack-unit 1 priority 1 and press Enter.
20. Type exit and press Enter.
21. Type stack-unit 1 stack-group 11 and press Enter.
22. Type copy run start and press Enter.
23. Connect the switches with SFP cables, from ports 44-47 in the first switch to the respective ports in the second
switch (port 44 in the first switch to port 44 in the second, etc.).
24. Connect to the first switch through the terminal, type reload and press Enter. Type yes and press Enter when
asked to proceed with the reload.
25. Wait for the first switch to finish rebooting.
26. Connect to the second switch through the terminal.
27. Type reload and press Enter. Type yes and press Enter when asked to proceed with the reload.
28. Wait for the second switch to finish rebooting.
29. Connect to the first switch through the terminal.
30. To ensure that the stack has been set up, type show redundancy and press Enter.
31. If configuration was successful, the LED labeled MASTER will have a steady green light for the master switch (the
first switch, here) and will show blinking green light for the standby switch (the second switch, here).
Configuring the out-of-band management port
1. In the first switch’s terminal, type enable and press Enter.
2. Type config and press Enter.
3. Type interface ManagementEthernet 0/0 and press Enter.
4. Type no shut and press Enter.
5. Type ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 and press Enter.
6. Type no shut and press Enter.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 17
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
18. 7. Type exit and press Enter.
Configuring login credentials
1. Type username admin privilege 15 password 0 password and press Enter, where password
is the password you wish to set.
2. Type enable password level 15 0 password and press Enter.
Configuring the remaining ports
1. Type interface range tengigabitethernet 0/0 – 43 and press Enter.
2. Type mtu 9216 and press Enter.
3. Type portmode hybrid and press Enter.
4. Type switchport and press Enter.
5. Type spanning-tree rstp edge-port and press Enter.
6. Type flowcontrol rx on tx on and press Enter.
7. Type no shut and press Enter.
8. Type exit and press Enter.
9. Type interface range tengigabitethernet 1/0 – 43 and press Enter.
10. Type mtu 9216 and press Enter.
11. Type portmode hybrid and press Enter
12. Type switchport and press Enter.
13. Type spanning-tree rstp edge-port and press Enter.
14. Type flowcontrol rx on tx on and press Enter.
15. Type no shut and press Enter.
16. Type exit and press Enter.
17. Create the VLANs on the switch and assign the ports to be able to route the traffic:
a. Type interface vlan 20
b. Type name livemigration
c. Type tagged tengigabitethernet 0/0–43
d. Type tagged tengigabitethernet 1/0-43
e. Type no shut and press Enter.
f. Type exit and press Enter.
g. Repeat steps a through e for VLAN 30, naming it privatecsv
18. Type buffer-profile global 1Q and press Enter.
19. Type exit and press Enter.
20. To save these settings, type copy run start and press Enter.
21. To apply these settings, type reload and press Enter. When asked if you want to proceed with the reload, type
yes and press Enter. After the switches reboot, the settings will have all taken effect.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 18
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
19. Configuring the Dell PowerEdge R720 servers
We installed Windows Server 2012 RC Datacenter Edition and ran all available Windows updates on each server.
Then we completed the steps below:
Adding the Hyper-V role, Failover Cluster feature, and MPIO feature
1. In Server Manager, click ManageAdd Roles and Features.
2. At the Before you begin screen, click Next.
3. At the Select installation type, leave the default selection of Role-based or feature-based installation, and click
Next.
4. At the Select destination server screen, leave the default selection, and click Next.
5. At the Select server roles screen, check the box for Hyper-V, and click Next.
6. When the Add Roles and Features Wizard window pops up, click Add Features.
7. Click Next.
8. At the Select features screen, check the box for Failover Clustering and Multipath I/O, clicking Add Features
when prompted for each, and click Next.
9. At the Hyper-V screen, click Next.
10. At the Create Virtual Switches screen, leave the NICs unselected, and click Next.
11. At the Virtual Machine Migration screen, leave the checkbox unselected, and click Next.
12. At the Default Stores screen, leave the default locations, and click Next.
13. At the Confirm installation selections screen, click Install.
14. When the installation completes, click Close.
Installing Dell EqualLogic Host Integration Tools
1. Insert the disk, and click Setup.exe.
2. At the Welcome screen, click Next.
3. At the License Agreement screen, review and accept the terms of the license agreement, and click Next.
4. At the Destination Folder screen, click Next.
5. At the Select Type screen, select Custom, and click Next.
6. At the Custom Setup screen, disable the Auto-Snapshot Manager/Microsoft Edition feature, and click Next.
7. At the Ready to Install the Program screen, click Install.
8. At the Installation Complete screen, click Finish.
9. In the pop-up window that follows to restart the system, click Yes.
Running the Remote Setup Wizard for the Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV
1. Press the Windows key and open Remote Setup Wizard.
2. At the Welcome screen, leave the radio button on Initialize a PS Series array, and click Next. The Remote Setup
Wizard will search for uninitialized PS Series arrays.
3. At the All PS Series arrays have been initialized screen, select the storage array, and click Next.
4. At the Initialize Array screen, enter the appropriate information, and click Next. For our testing, we used
PS6110XVstorage for Member Name, 192.10.1.101 for IP Address, 255.255.255.0 for Subnet Mask,
and 192.10.1.1 for Default Gateway.
5. Under Group Information, leave the Create a new group radio button selected, and click Next.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 19
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
20. 6. At the Create a New Group screen, enter the appropriate information. For our testing, we used grpmanager
for the Group Name, and 192.10.1.100 for the Group IP Address.
7. Select the desired RAID level. We selected RAID 10 for the RAID Policy.
8. Under Credentials for New Group, enter the passwords.
9. Under CHAP credentials for VDS/VSS access to group, enter a user name and password, and click Next.
10. On the Initialization Successful pop-up, click OK.
11. Click Finish.
Creating a VLANs on the Intel X520-DA adapters
1. Go to the Network and Sharing Center, right-click the first Intel Ethernet Server Adapter X520-2 port, and select
Properties.
2. Click Configure.
3. Click the VLANs tab.
4. Click New.
5. Use 20 for the VLAN ID, and click OK.
6. Repeat steps 4-5 with the VLAN ID 30, and then repeat once more but instead of entering a VLAN ID, check the
Untagged checkbox.
7. Click OK.
8. Right-click the first newly-created Ethernet port, and click Properties.
9. Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4), and click Properties.
10. Provide the appropriate IP addresses for each type of traffic, iSCSI, Live Migration, and Private-CSV.
11. Click OK.
12. Repeat steps 1-11 for the second Intel Ethernet Server Adapter X520-2 port, using the appropriate IP addresses.
Configuring a NIC team with the Public-VM NICs
1. In Server Manager, click Local Server in the left pane.
2. In the Properties frame, next to NIC Teaming, click Disabled.
3. In the TEAMS section of the NIC Teaming window that pops up, click the Tasks menu, and click New Team.
4. Assign a name to the team, and check the boxes for the two appropriate 1G adapters to add them to the team.
For our testing, we named this the Public-VM team.
5. When finished, click OK.
6. Assign an appropriate IP address to the teamed NIC, and join the server to the domain.
Configuring MPIO settings
1. Press the Windows key, and open Remote Setup Wizard.
2. At the Welcome to the Remote Setup Wizard screen, select Configure MPIO settings for this computer, and click
Next.
3. Under Subnets included for MPIO, select the subnets you wish to exclude from MPIO.
4. Click Exclude.
5. Click Finish.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 20
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
21. Configuring the Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage
1. Press the Windows key, click Internet Explorer, and enter the IP address of the Dell EqualLogic PS Series Group
Manager. For our testing, we used 192.10.1.100.
2. Log into Group Manager using the credentials you created during the Remote Setup Wizard.
3. Expand Members, click the member PS6110XVStorage, and in the right pane, select the Network tab.
4. Right-click the management port, and select Enable interface.
5. Click Yes in the Enable network interface popup that appears.
6. Click OK in the Warning popup that appears.
7. Right-click, and select Modify IP settings.
8. Enter the desired IP address for the management port, and click OK. For our testing we used 192.20.1.200
for the IP address and 255.255.255.0 for the Subnet mask.
9. Create the volumes:
a. In the left pane, click Volumes, and, in the adjacent pane, click Create volume.
b. Name the volume VirtualMachine1 and click Next.
c. Type 70 for the Volume size, and click Next. For our testing purposes we did not create a snapshot
reserve with the volume.
d. On the Step 3 – iSCSI Access screen, click the Allow simultaneous connections from initiators with
different IQN names checkbox, and perform the following, depending on the volume you are creating:
i. For the VirtualMachine1-4 and DiskWitness volumes, check the Limit access to iSCSI initiator
name box, and enter the appropriate iSCSI initiator name. For our testing, this was iqn.1991-
05.com.microsoft:R720-1.testdomainpt
ii. For the Exchange and SQL Server volumes, leave the No access radio button selected since you
will enter the IQN name of the appropriate VM later.
e. Click Finish.
10. Repeat step 6 eleven times for the remaining volumes, using the following names and volume sizes:
o VirtualMachine2 – 70GB
o VirtualMachine3 – 70GB
o VirtualMachine4 – 570GB (SharePoint)
o Exchange – 1,000GB
o ExchangeLog – 100GB
o SQLData – 150GB
o SQLLog – 25GB
o SQLData2 – 150GB
o SQLLog2 – 25GB
o DiskWitness – 10 GB
Connecting to the volumes with Microsoft iSCSI Initiator
1. To launch iSCSI Initiator, select Tools from the Server Manager menu, and click iSCSI Initiator.
2. Select the Discovery Tab, and click Discover Portal.
3. Enter the IP Address for the Dell EqualLogic Storage Group, and click OK.
4. Select the Targets tab, and click Refresh.
5. Select the first Inactive Target listed, and click Connect.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 21
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
22. 6. Ensure that Add this connection to the list of Favorite Targets is selected, check the Enable multi-path check box,
and click OK.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 three times, until you’ve connected to all four volumes, and click OK.
Configuring the Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV for access from the second Hyper-V host
1. Click StartInternet Explorer, and enter the IP address of the Dell EqualLogic PS Series Group Manager. For our
testing, we used 192.10.1.100.
2. Log into the group manager using the credentials you created during the Remote Setup Wizard.
3. Click the volume VirtualMachine1, click the Access tab, and click Add.
4. Check the Limit access to iSCSI initiator name checkbox and enter the iSCSI initiator name of the second Hyper-V
host server, and click OK. For our testing, this was iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:R720-
2.testdomainpt.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 four times for the remaining volumes:
o VirtualMachine2
o VirtualMachine3
o VirtualMachine4
o DiskWitness
CREATING THE FAILOVER CLUSTER AND SETTING UP THE MANAGEMENT
SERVER
Creating the virtual switches on each Hyper-V host
Complete the following steps on each host server, ensuring that you use the same name for the virtual network
on each host.
1. Open Server Manager, and click ToolsHyper-V Manager.
2. In the right pane, click Virtual Switch Manager.
3. Leave External highlighted under type of virtual switch, and click Create Virtual Switch.
4. Enter a name, in our case Public-VM, and select the Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor Driver from the
drop-down menu under External Network to select the teamed NIC. Check the Allow management operating
system to share this network adapter, and click Apply.
5. When the warning pops up, click Yes.
6. Click OK.
7. Repeat steps 1 through 6 twice, once for each of the iSCSI NICs on each Hyper-V Host. You will use these to
attach the additional volumes to each VM later in the setup process.
Creating and configuring the cluster
Next, use the management server to create the cluster. Before creating the cluster, add the Failover Cluster
Manager feature and Hyper-V Management Tools from the Remote Server Administration Tools feature from Server
Manager on your management server. Then, complete the following steps.
Running the Validate a Configuration Wizard and creating the cluster in Failover Cluster Manager
1. Open Server Manager.
2. Click ToolsFailover Cluster Manager.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 22
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
23. 3. Click Validate Configuration…
4. On the Before You Begin page, check the Do not show this page again box, and click Next.
5. At the Select Servers page, type the name of each Hyper-V host server, and click Add. After adding both servers,
click Next.
6. On the Testing Options page, select Run all tests (recommended), and click Next.
7. On the Confirmation page, click Next to begin running the validation tests.
8. Once the validation tests complete successfully, click Finish.
9. Next, the Create Cluster Wizard pops up. (If it does not, click Create Cluster… in Failover Cluster Manager.) At
the Before You Begin screen, click Next.
10. At the Access Point for Administering the Cluster, enter a name an appropriate IP address. For our testing, we
used TestCluster as the name and 192.168.1.50 as the IP address.
11. At the Confirmation screen, leave the default selections, and click Next.
12. At the Summary Screen, click Finish.
Next, verify that the cluster shared volumes, disk witness, and networking settings are set correctly:
1. Select and expand the newly created cluster in Failover Cluster Manager.
2. Expand Storage, and click Disks. Verify that the cluster creation process added all four virtual machine disks, and
that the 10GB volume has been appropriately assigned as the disk witness in quorum.
3. Next, expand Networks. Verify that the Public-VM network is set to external, the Private-CSV and Live Migration
networks are set to internal, and that the iSCSI network is set to disabled. Notice which cluster network has the
subnet that corresponds to the Live Migration network, as you will need this information to complete the next
step. In our test setup, this subnet is 192.20.1.0 and was assigned as Cluster Network 3.
4. Click Live Migration Settings… in the right pane.
5. Uncheck the checkboxes for the Cluster Networks that correspond with iSCSI and Public-VM traffic, and move
the dedicated Live Migration network to be the preferred network. Click Apply, and click OK.
INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Installing prerequisites for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager
Before installing SCVMM 2012, you will need to join the management server to the domain and deploy a
supported edition (Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter) of SQL Server. For our testing, we used SQL Server 2012
Enterprise Edition. Then, complete the following steps:
Installing Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit for Windows 8 Release Preview
1. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29929 and click the Download button to
download the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit for Windows 8 Release Preview.
2. Run adksetup.exe.
3. Select Install the Assessment and Deployment Kit to this computer, and designate an installation path. Click
Next.
4. On the Join the Custom Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) screen, select No, and click Next.
5. On the License Agreement screen, click Accept.
6. When asked to Select the features you want to install, check all of the boxes, and click Install.
7. When installation completes, click Close.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 23
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
24. Installing Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Command Line Utilities
1. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29065 and scroll down the page until you
see Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Command Line Utilities, and click the X64 Package link.
2. Launch SqlCmdLnUtils.exe once it finishes downloading.
3. At the welcome screen, click Next.
4. Accept the terms of the license agreement, and click Next.
5. Click Install.
6. When installation completes, click Finish.
Installing Microsoft Report Viewer 2010 Redistributable Package
1. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6442 and click the Download button.
2. Launch ReportViewer.exe after it finishes downloading.
3. At the welcome screen, click Next.
4. Accept the license terms, and click Install.
5. When installation completes, click Finish.
Installing System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012
1. Insert the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 DVD, and run setup.exe.
2. At the welcome screen, check the Get the latest updates to Virtual machine Manager from Windows Update
checkbox, and click Install.
3. At the Select features to add screen, check the VMM management server and VMM console boxes, and click
Next.
4. At the Product registration information screen, enter the appropriate name, organization, and product key, and
click Next.
5. Accept the license agreement terms, and click Next.
6. At the Customer Experience Improvement Program screen, select the radio button for No, I am not willing to
participate, and click Next.
7. At the Microsoft Update screen, select On (recommended) and click Next.
8. At the Installation location screen, leave the default location, and click Next.
9. At the prerequisite warnings screen, complete any prerequisite requests, and click Next.
10. At the Database configuration screen, select the appropriate SQL Server instance name from the drop-down
menu, and click Next.
11. On the Configure service account and distributed key management screen, select Domain account, enter the
domain administrator’s username and choose the password, and click Next.
12. On the Port configuration screen, click Next.
13. On the Library configuration screen, select Create a new library share, enter a Share name, and click Next.
14. On the Installation summary screen, click Install.
15. When setup completes, click Close.
Adding the failover cluster in SCVMM 2012
1. Launch the System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Console.
2. Select Specify credentials, provide the credentials for the Active Directory administrator, and click Connect.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 24
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
25. 3. Select the Fabric workspace on the bottom left, click the Add Resources button in the Ribbon, and select Hyper-
V Hosts and Clusters.
4. At the Resource location screen, select Windows Server computers in a trusted Active Directory domain, and
click Next.
5. At the Credentials screen, select Manually enter the credentials, provide the credentials for the domain
administrator account, and click Next.
6. At the Discovery scope screen, select Specify Windows Server computers by names, enter the names of the two
Hyper-V hosts, and click Next.
7. At the Target resources screen, click the box next to the failover cluster name, and click Next.
8. At the Host settings screen, click Next.
9. On the Summary screen, click Finish.
If a Jobs window pops up recommending that you reboot the Hyper-V hosts, you can close
NOTE the window and use the Connect via RDP button at the Host banner to restart the Hyper-V
hosts.
Installing System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2012
1. Insert the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2012 DVD, and run Setup.exe.
2. At the Welcome screen, click Install.
3. Check the features you wish to install, and click Next. For our testing purposes, we selected Management server
and Operations console.
4. At the Select installation location screen, click Next.
5. At the Proceed with Setup screen, click Next.
6. At the Specify an installation option screen, select Create the first Management server in a new management
group, give the Management group a name, and click Next.
7. Accept the terms of the license agreement, and click Next.
8. On the Configure the operational database screen, enter the appropriate SQL server same instance name, and
click Next. For our testing purposes, we used the default SQL Server instance
(R620.testdomainptMSSQLSERVER).
9. On the Configure the data warehouse database screen, enter the instance name used above, select Create a
new data warehouse database, and click Next.
10. At the Configure Operations Manager accounts, leave the default radio buttons selected, enter the appropriate
credentials for each service, and click Next. For security reasons, it is not recommended that you use a domain
administrator account.
11. At the Customer Experience Improvement Program and Error Reporting screen, select No, I am not willing to
participate for both radio button selections, and click Next.
12. On the Microsoft Update screen, select On (recommended) and click Next.
13. On the Installation Summary screen, click Install.
14. When the installation completes, select Launch Microsoft Update when the wizard closes and Start the
Operations console when the wizard closes.
15. Click Close.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 25
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
26. Configuring SCOM 2012
1. Launch the System Center Operations Console, and click Monitoring workspace on the bottom left of the screen.
2. Click the link for Required: Configure computers and devices to manage.
3. In the Computer and Device Management Wizard, select Windows computers, and click Next.
4. Select Automatic computer discovery, and click Next.
5. Select Use selected Management Server Action Account or enter appropriate credentials, and click Discover.
6. Check the box for the devices you wish to manage, and click Next. For our testing, we selected to manage the
Hyper-V host servers and the Active Directory server in our testbed.
7. At the Summary screen, select local system or enter the appropriate credentials to allow the agents to execute,
and click Finish.
8. When the task finishes, click Close.
Importing the Dell Server PRO Management Pack
1. Download the latest available Dell Server PRO Management Pack (for our testing, we used version 2.1) for
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
2. Launch Dell_PROPack_v2.1.0_A00.exe, and click Unzip to the default location.
3. Click OK when the window pops up saying the files unzipped successfully.
4. Launch the System Center Operations Console, and click the Monitoring workspace on the bottom left of the
screen.
5. Click the link for Required: Required: Import management packs.
6. On the Import Management Packs screen, click AddAdd from disk…, and when the Online Catalog Connection
screen pops up, click Yes.
7. When the Select Management Packs to import screen pops up, navigate to the location where the files were
unzipped in step 2 of this section. By default, this is C:Dell Management PacksDell PROPack Management
Pack2.1.0
8. Select Dell.Connections.hyperv.PROPack.mp, and click Open.
9. The Import Management Packs wizard will say that the management pack depends on other packs that aren’t
yet imported, but are available in the online catalog. Click the Resolve link under the Status column.
10. In the Dependency Warning screen that pops up, click Resolve.
11. Click Install, and click Yes to continue.
12. When the management pack import is complete, click Close.
Integrating SCVMM 2012 with SCOM 2012
1. Launch the System Center Operations Console, and click the Monitoring workspace on the bottom left of the
screen.
2. Click the link for Required: Required: Import management packs.
3. On the Import Management Packs screen, click AddAdd from catalog…
4. Search for Windows Server 2008 Internet Information Services 7, and expand the search results to locate it in
the catalog (under Microsoft CorporationWindows ServerIIS 2008). Highlight it, and click Add.
5. Click Resolve to also download and install the necessary dependencies. At the Dependency Warning, click
Resolve.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 26
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
27. 6. When the Windows Server 2008 Operating System (Discovery) management pack appears, click Resolve. At the
Dependency Warning, click Resolve.
7. Click Install.
8. Click Close when the management packs have been imported.
9. Launch the SCVMM 2012 console and log in using the appropriate credentials.
10. In the bottom left pane, click Settings, click System Center Settings, and double-click Operations Manager
Server.
11. At the Introduction screen, click Next.
12. Enter the server name for the management server, specify the credentials you wish to log in with, and click Next.
13. At the Connection to VMM screen, enter the appropriate domain user credentials, and click Next.
14. At the Summary screen, click Finish.
CREATING AND CONFIGURING THE VIRTUAL MACHINES
Creating the virtual machines
1. In Failover Cluster Manager, click Roles, and click Virtual Machines…New Virtual Machine…
2. At the New Virtual Machine screen, select the cluster node you wish to install the VM on. For our testing
purposes, we hosted a SQL Server VM and the Exchange VM on one server, and the other SQL Server VM and
the SharePoint VM on the other server.
3. At the Before You Begin screen, click Next.
4. Enter a name for the virtual machine, check the Store the virtual machine in a different location checkbox, click
Browse…, and navigate to the cluster shared volume. By default, this is on C:ClusterStorage on each Hyper-V
host. Click Next.
5. Enter 4096 for the startup memory, and click Next.
6. At the Configure Networking screen, select Public-VM (or the appropriate name for the Public-VM virtual switch
you created) from the drop-down menu, and click Next.
7. At the Connect Virtual Hard Disk screen, enter 70GB for the size (or 570GB for the SharePoint VM), and click
Next.
8. At the Installation Options screen, click Install an operating system later, and click Next. We will install the
operating systems after creating all of the VMs.
9. Click Finish to begin VM creation.
10. At the Summary screen, view any notifications following VM creation, and click Finish.
11. Right-click the newly created VM and click Settings...
12. Under Processor, change the number of virtual processors to 4, and click Apply.
13. Select Add Hardware, select Network Adapter, and click Add.
14. Under Virtual switch, select the first iSCSI virtual switch, and click Apply.
15. Repeat steps 13 and 14 for the second iSCSI virtual switch, and click OK.
16. Repeat steps 1 through 15 for the three remaining VMs. Please note that you will not need to add additional
network adapters (steps 13-15 for the SharePoint VM).
Now, install an operating system on each virtual machine. To do this, complete the following steps:
1. Insert the installation DVD into the assigned Hyper-V host for the VM
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 27
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
28. 2. Right-click the virtual machine in Failover Cluster Manager, and click Connect…
3. Click MediaDVD DriveCapture G: (or the drive letter of the DVD Drive).
4. To boot the VM, click the Start button on the panel.
5. Allow the operating system files to load off the installation media, and install the OS in the same way as you
would on a physical server.
6. After installing and configuring the OS, click ActionInsert Integration Services Setup Disk. Run the installation,
and reboot when prompted.
Configuring the virtual machines
Before proceeding with this section, ensure that you have assigned an appropriate name and IP address to each
virtual machine, and that they have been joined to the existing domain. Additionally, you must install the Dell EqualLogic
Host Integration Tools and exclude the Public-VM subnet from MPIO using the Remote Setup Wizard. You will need to
perform these steps on both SQL Server VMs and the Exchange VM, but not the SharePoint VM.
1. Connect to the first VM, open a Web browser, and log into the EqualLogic PS Series Group Manager with the
appropriate credentials. If prompted, install Java.
2. Expand the volumes, and select the appropriate volume.
3. In the right pane, click the Access tab, and click Add.
4. At the Create access control record screen, click Limit access to iSCSI initiator name, enter the name of the
appropriate VM, and click OK.
5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 for any additional volumes to which you need to enable access for that VM. For
example, for VM #1 you will need to enable access to both the SQLData and SQLLog volumes. When you are
finished, close the browser window.
6. In Server Manager, click ToolsiSCSI Initiator.
7. Select the Discovery Tab, and click Discover Portal.
8. Enter the IP Address for the Dell EqualLogic Storage Group, and click OK.
9. Select the Targets tab, and click Refresh.
10. Select the first Inactive Target listed, and click Connect.
11. Ensure that the Add this connection to the list of Favorite Targets is selected, check the Enable multi-path check
box, and click OK.
12. Repeat steps 10 and 11 if needed for additional volumes, and click OK.
13. Bring the volumes online using Disk Management under Computer Management.
14. Repeat steps 1 through 13 for the other two VMs.
CUSTOMIZING YOUR VIRTUAL MACHINES
Installing SQL Server 2012 on VMs #1 and #2
Install an instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 by following these steps. This installation walkthrough covers
only the installation of the Database Engine and Management Components. For other components outside the scope of
this guide, such as Reporting Services, Integration Services, or Analysis Services, see Microsoft documentation at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb500395.aspx.
1. Connect and log into the virtual machine.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 28
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
29. 2. Insert the installation DVD for SQL Server 2012 into the appropriate Hyper-V host server’s DVD drive and attach
it to the virtual machine.
3. Click Run SETUP.EXE. If Autoplay does not begin the installation, navigate to the SQL Server 2012 DVD, and
double-click it.
4. If the installer prompts you with a .NET installation prompt, click Yes to enable the .NET Framework Core role.
5. In the left pane, click Installation.
6. Click New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing installation.
7. At the Setup Support Rules screen, wait for the rule check to complete. If there are no failures or relevant
warnings, click OK.
8. Enter your product key, and click Next.
9. Click the checkbox to accept the license terms, and click Next.
10. If no failures are displayed after the setup support files are installed, click Next.
11. At the Setup Role screen, choose SQL Server Feature Installation.
12. At the Feature Selection screen, select the features that your organization requires. We chose the following
features for this guide: Database Engine Services, Full-Text and Semantic Extractions for Search, Client Tools
Connectivity, Client Tools Backwards Compatibility, Management Tools – Basic, and Management Tools –
Complete. Click Next.
13. At the Installation Rules screen, click Next after the check completes.
14. At the Instance configuration screen, enter the appropriate details for your configuration. For a default instance,
leave the defaults selected. For a named instance, enter a new instance name and adjust the file paths as
necessary. Click Next.
15. At the Disk Space Requirements screen, click Next.
16. At the Server Configuration screen, choose the service account, preferably an Active Directory domain account,
fill in a password if necessary, and click Next.
17. At the Database Engine Configuration screen, choose an authentication mode. If your legacy servers use SQL
Server logins at all, select Mixed Mode. If you exclusively use Active Directory domain accounts in your SQL
Server environment, choose Windows Authentication.
18. If you choose to use Mixed Mode authentication, enter a password for the system administrator (SA) account,
and click Add Current User.
19. Click the Data Directories tab, and enter the appropriate drive and folder to which you eventually deploy the
SharePoint databases.
20. Click Next.
21. At the Error reporting screen, click Next.
22. At the Installation Configuration Rules screen, check that there are no failures or relevant warnings, and click
Next.
23. At the Ready to Install screen, click Install.
24. After installation completes, click Close.
25. Close the installation window.
26. After the SQL Server 2012 installation process completes, check Microsoft’s Web site for the latest SQL Server
service pack and install it. At the time we wrote this guide, there were no service packs available.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 29
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
30. Installing Exchange Server 2010 SP2 on VM #3
1. Select StartAdministrative ToolsServer Manager.
2. Click Add Roles.
3. At the Before You Begin screen, click Next.
4. At the Select Server Roles screen, click Web Server (IIS).
5. If prompted by an Add features required for Web Server (IIS) pop-up window, click Add Required Features.
6. Click Next.
7. At the Web Server (IIS) screen, click Next.
8. At the Select Role Services screen, select the Static Content, Default Document, Directory Browsing, HTTP Errors,
HTTP Redirection, ASP .NET, .NET Extensibility, ISAPI Extensions, ISAPI Filters, HTTP Logging, Request Monitor,
Tracing, Basic Authentication, Windows Authentication, Digest Authentication, Client Certificate Mapping
Authentication, Request Filtering, Static Content Compression, Dynamic Content Compression, IIS 6 Metabase
Compatibility, IIS 6 WMI Compatibility, and IIS 6 Management Console checkboxes, and click Next.
9. At the Confirm Installation Selections screen, click Install.
10. At the Installation Results screen, click Close.
11. Select StartAdministrative ToolsServer Manager.
12. Click Features.
13. Click Add Features.
14. Select .NET Framework 3.5.1 Features.
15. When the Add Features Wizard pop-up prompts you, click Add Required Role Services.
16. Click Next.
17. At the Introduction to Web Server (IIS) screen, click Next.
18. At the Select Role Services screen, click Next.
19. Click Install.
20. At the Installation Results screen, click Close.
21. Download the Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0.
(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=5cd4dcd7-d3e6-4970-875e-aba93459fbee )
22. Run FilterPack64bit.EXE.
23. Click Next.
24. Check the I accept the terms in the License Agreement box, and click Next.
25. When the installation completes, click OK.
26. Click StartAdministrative ToolsServices.
27. Right-click the Net.TCP Port Sharing service, and click Properties.
28. Change the Net.TCP Port Sharing startup type to Automatic, and click OK.
29. Open a command prompt, type ServerManagerCmd –i RSAT-ADDS, and press Enter.
30. Reboot the server.
31. Insert the Exchange Server 2010 SP2 installation DVD, and capture the DVD drive in the VM session. When the
Autoplay window appears, click Run Setup.EXE.
32. The installer should consider steps 1, 2, and 3 to be complete (they appear grayed out). Click the link to Step 4:
Install Microsoft Exchange.
33. To go past the introduction screen, click Next.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 30
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
31. 34. Accept the license agreement, and click Next.
35. Select No for error reporting, and click Next.
36. Select Typical Exchange Server Installation, and click Next.
37. Leave the organization name at default (First Organization), and click Next.
38. At the question about client computers running Outlook 2003 or Entourage, select Yes, and click Next.
39. To accept defaults for Configure Client Access server external domain, click Next.
40. At the Customer Experience Improvement Program screen, select I don’t wish to join the program at this time,
and click Next.
41. If a warning about a lack of SMTP appears after the check finishes, ignore it for now. We address this issue in
steps 42-52 below.
42. Click Install to start the installation process.
43. After the installation has completed, click Finish. Exchange should automatically open the Exchange
Management Console.
44. At the pop-up that warns about rebooting, click OK.
45. If Exchange does not automatically open the Exchange Management Console, click StartAll
ProgramsMicrosoft Exchange Server 2010Exchange Management Console.
46. In the left pane, expand Microsoft Exchange On-Premises, expand Organization Configuration, and select Hub
Transport.
47. In the Actions pane on the far right, select New Send Connector.
48. Name the send connector SMTP, select the intended use as Internet, and click Next.
49. In the Address space window, click Add.
50. In the SMTP Address Space window, type * as the address, check the Include all subdomains checkbox, and click
OK.
51. Click Next.
52. On the Network settings page, select Use domain name system (DNS) “MX” records to route mail automatically,
and click Next.
53. In the Source Server window, accept the defaults, and click Next.
54. At the New Connector page, click New to create the connector.
55. Click Finish to close the New SMTP Send Connector wizard.
Configuring the Exchange Server 2010 Mailbox role
Before completing this section, create an additional three mailbox databases so that you have four total, and
complete these steps on each mailbox database.
1. Select StartAll ProgramsMicrosoft Exchange Server 2010Exchange Management Console.
2. In the left pane, expand Organization Configuration, and click Mailbox.
3. Click the Database Management tab.
4. Right-click Mailbox Database, and select Properties.
5. Select the Maintenance tab.
6. Check the Enable circular logging box.
7. Check the box beside This database can be overwritten by a restore.
8. Next to Maintenance interval, click Customize.
9. Remove all blue from the boxes so the system will not perform maintenance, and click OK.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 31
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
32. 10. Click OK.
11. Click OK to any warnings about circular logging being applied after the database is remounted.
12. On the far right panel, click Move Databases.
13. Change the Database file and Log folder path locations to E:Database(filename) and F:Maillogs respectively,
and click Move.
14. If the application prompts you to dismount, click Yes.
15. Click Finish.
16. Right-click Public Folder Database, and select Properties.
17. Check the Enable circular logging checkbox
18. Click Customize next to Maintenance interval.
19. Remove all blue from the boxes so the system will not perform maintenance, and click OK.
20. Click OK.
21. On any warnings about circular logging being applied after the database is remounted, click OK.
22. Click Move Database on the far right panel.
23. Change the Database file and Log folder path locations to E:Database(filename) and F:Publiclogs respectively,
and click Move.
24. If the application prompts you to dismount, click Yes.
25. Click Finish.
Installing SharePoint Server 2010 on VM #4
1. Insert the installation DVD, and capture the DVD drive in the VM session.
2. Launch splash.hta, and click Install software prerequisites.
3. At the Welcome to the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products Preparation Tool screen, click Next.
4. Accept the EULA, and click Next.
5. When the prerequisites finish installing, click Finish.
6. On the main SharePoint installation menu, click Install SharePoint Server.
7. Enter your product license key, and click Continue.
8. Accept the EULA, and click Continue.
9. Choose the Stand-Alone server type, and click Install.
10. When the installation finishes, check the box for Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard now, and
click Close.
11. On the Welcome to SharePoint Products screen, click Next.
12. On the pop-up warning about services that will need to be restarted during the configuration, click Yes.
13. When the wizard has completed the configuration, click Finish.
Configuring the database (DVD Store)
Data generation overview
We generated the data using the Install.pl script included with DVD Store version 2.1 (DS2), providing the
parameters for our 100GB database size and the database platform on which we ran: Microsoft SQL Server. We ran the
Install.pl script on a utility system running Linux. The database schema was also generated by the Install.pl script.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 32
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions
33. After processing the data generation, we transferred the data files and schema creation files to a Windows-
based system running SQL Server 2012. We built the 100GB database in SQL Server 2012, and then performed a full
backup, storing the backup file on the C: drive for quick access. We used that backup file to restore to the servers
between test runs. We performed this procedure once.
The only modification we made to the schema creation scripts were the specified file sizes for our database. We
explicitly set the file sizes higher than necessary to ensure that no file-growth activity would affect the outputs of the
test. Besides this file size modification, the database schema was created and loaded according to the DVD Store
documentation. Specifically, we followed the steps below:
1. We generated the data and created the database and file structure using database creation scripts in the DS2
download. We made size modifications specific to our 100GB database and the appropriate changes to drive
letters.
a. We transferred the files from our Linux data generation system to a Windows system running SQL
Server.
b. We created database tables, stored procedures, and objects using the provided DVD Store scripts.
c. We set the database recovery model to bulk-logged to prevent excess logging.
d. We loaded the data we generated into the database. For data loading, we used the import wizard in SQL
Server Management Studio. Where necessary, we retained options from the original scripts, such as
Enable Identity Insert.
e. We created indices, full-text catalogs, primary keys, and foreign keys using the database-creation scripts.
f. We updated statistics on each table according to database-creation scripts, which sample 18 percent of
the table data.
g. On the SQL Server instance, we created a ds2user SQL Server login using the following Transact SQL
(TSQL) script:
USE [master]
GO
CREATE LOGIN [ds2user] WITH PASSWORD=N’’,
DEFAULT_DATABASE=[master],
DEFAULT_LANGUAGE=[us_english],
CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF,
CHECK_POLICY=OFF
GO
h. We set the database recovery model back to full.
i. We created the necessary full text index using SQL Server Management Studio.
j. We created a database user and mapped this user to the SQL Server login.
k. We then performed a full backup of the database. This backup allowed us to restore the databases to a
pristine state relatively quickly between tests.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: Highly available and scalable A Principled Technologies test report 33
performance with Dell PowerEdge R720-based solutions